Nigeria's Buhari Renews Challenge

Muhammadu Buhari says the tribunal was wrong. A Nigerian opposition candidate is appealing to the Supreme Court over the election of President Umaru Yar'Adua.

Defeated All Nigeria People's Party candidate Muhammadu Buhari wants last year's widely criticised poll annulled.

Last week, the election tribunal said Mr Buhari had failed to prove the result of the election had been affected by rigging.

Mr Buhari's lawyers said the burden of proof should be on the government.

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Buhari was Yar'Adua's competition in the last presidential election. Last week there was a tribunal held to determine whether the presidential election should be annuled due to the recent evidence found that makes it appear that the election was rigged. Though Buhari lost the tribunal last week, he has not given up. He had plenty of evidence proving the Yar'Adua was not the fair winner, including ballots that did not have serial numbers. Buhari has not given up yet, even though Yar'Adua was declared innocent. Considering all of the evidence that Buhari presented, it is surprising that he did not win. Perhaps Yar'Adua had to resort to corrupt practices in order to hide how he won the presidential election.

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'Super Tuesday': Verdict on Yar' Adua's Fate Today

After several months of legal battle over the legitimacy or otherwise of the April 21, 2007 presidential elections, the presidential election petition tribunal will today deliver its verdict on whether the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar'Adua and his running mate, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, validly emerged winners or not. The Appeal Court President, Justice Umaru Abdulahi, has meanwhile okayed live coverage of the event by the media.

The election was widely described by national and international observers as marred by rigging and irregularities across the nation.

Specifically, the tribunal will give its verdict in two separate, but consolidated petitions filed by the presidential candidates of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), Gen. Muhammadu Buhari and his counterpart from the Action Congress (AC), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.

In their separate petitions, the two candidates have urged the tribunal to void the election on the claim that the elections were a ruse as, according to them, votes were
merely allotted to candidates by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

They also argued that since the election was not conducted in substantial compliance with the provisions of the Electoral Act 2006, the tribunal had a duty to nullify the results so declared by INEC.

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The decision concerning whether or not the 2007 election was flawed or not will be given later on today. Yar'Adua's opponents filed both petitions. Their main arguments were that the votes were alloted solely to the canidates running on behalf of the Independent National Electoral Commission and the the election was not compliant with the rules set by the Electoral Act of 2006. They think that the election should be declared null and void. This shows that theNigerian government is finally dealing with the corrupt government. They are taking a step to no longer allow cheating, bribery, theft, and blackmail within the government.

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The Chairman of INEC Allegedly Lied Under Oath

Some ballot papers used for the April 21, 2007 presidential election were printed in South Africa, findings by THE PUNCH have revealed.

This contradicts the claim of the Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Maurice Iwu, that the printing were solely handled by the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company at a cost of N7.7bn.

Iwu’s claim was contained in his affidavit in response to the 27 questions raised by the presidential candidate of the Action Congress, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, on the conduct of the poll.

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In support of the accusations made by Buhari and Abubakar on the 24th, Punch newspaper has discovered that the ballots for the most recent election were indeed made at least partly by a South African company, but it has not been confirmed whether or not the ballot had serial numbers. The handling of the elections, however, was under the control of Obasanjo, and Yar’Adua may or may not have been at fault.
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Yar'Adua Faces Court Over Alleged Fraudulent Elections

Since the election, denounced by some outside observers as the most fraudulent they had ever witnessed, over 1,200 petitions have been filed by the losing candidates in protest against the results. Almost all the successful petitions so far have alleged individual breaches of the electoral law, such as ballot papers with missing names. But more systematic crimes may have occurred, and indeed the first petitioner to prove wholesale malpractice on election day—many voters never even saw ballot papers—won his case last week against the governor of Enugu state. Those bringing the case against the president hope to do the same.

The former military president, Muhammadu Buhari, and the former vice-president, Atiku Abubakar, are leading the charge against Mr Yar'Adua—both lost to him in the presidential poll. They allege that the elections were a sham, that the country failed to produce a complete voters' register and that ballots lacked serial numbers (and were therefore impossible to track). Furthermore, Mr Abubakar says he was illegally excluded from the poll until the very last minute, preventing him from campaigning.

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Many people in Nigeria are claiming that the most recent elctions were fraudulent, and this is no surprise for a counry so recently Democratic as Nigeria. The recent change to Democracy would also make it easy for someone to denouce the elections as the "most fraudulent," because they have probably only witnessed three. In all seriousness, the claims over fraud are probably true to at least some degree, but whether anything will be done remains to be seen. Holding elections for a seceond time may prove difficult or impossible to accomplish.
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