According to recent Reuters reports, Umaru Yar’Adua of the ruling People’s Democratic Party won the Saturday election with 24,638,063 votes – a definite win over his nearest rival, Muhammadu Buhari of the All Nigeria People’s Party, who only pulled in 6,605,299 votes.
Unfortunately, the elections were far from perfect, riddled with ballot-stuffing, violence, and a short of millions of voting papers. In fact, the week before the Nigerian elections was a bloody, chaotic massacre; at least 49 people died in election-related violence since April 14.
“Our elections could not have been said to have been perfect,” former Nigerian President Olusegen Obasanjo said in a nationwide address.
Obasanjo went on to accuse “some political leaders” of inciting violence to achieve victory, but that the people of Nigeria refused to let it interfere with the voting process.
“Nothing should be done to make our people lose faith in the electoral process and its democratic outcome,” Obasanjo said.
Obasanjo wasn’t the only one disappointed with the behavior surrounding the elections. Max van den Berg, head of the European Observer mission, said the elections didn’t live up to the expectations of the Nigerian people.
“The people of Nigeria deserve credit for the admirable way in which they conducted themselves on Saturday and demonstrated their commitment to democracy by patiently waiting to vote in often difficult circumstances,” van den Berg said in a recent statement. “However, preparations for the elections should have been of a higher standard and must be substantially improved in the coming days to deliver a credible and secure process at the federal elections.”
Now that the elections – and the chaos that resulted from them – are over, energy producers the world over are hoping things calm down in Nigeria. Light, sweet crude for June delivery rose 58 cents to $64.69 a barrel in trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude for June delivery rose 86 cents to $67.35 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London.
Gasoline futures were 3.3 cents higher at $2.17.
