Nigeria woke up to a much changed political landscape Monday, five
days before a historic presidential poll, as parliamentary election
results produced a string of surprises.
President Olusegun Obasanjo's ruling party made stunning gains in the opposition fiefdoms of the southwest, but suffered serious setbacks as his main poll rival forged ahead in the mainly-Muslim north.
While most observers praised Saturday's legislative poll as broadly trouble-free by the standards of Nigeria's bloody history, voting in the southeast was marred by serious outbreaks of violence and attempted fraud.
The elections, Nigeria's first since the end of military rule in 1999 and Africa's biggest ever, were seen as a crucial first test of the country's young democracy ahead of Saturday's showdown for the top job.
Several incumbent politicians were forced out as Obasanjo's People's Democratic Party (PDP) lost out to Muhammadu Buhari's All Nigeria People's Party in the northern state of Kano while gaining ground in the southwest.
Festus Okoye, head of Nigeria's Transition Monitoring Group, said the swing against the status quo could exacerbate the tensions in Nigeria's 36 state gubernatorial races in the last week of campaigning.
"What this means is that some of the incumbents might get desperate if their analysis after this election is that they are not likely to return to power," he said, warning of the risk of increased violence.
Many poll monitors also reported organisational problems that could add to the mood of crisis in many states in the build-up to the April 19 presidential and state governor elections.
US observers from the International Republican Institute (IRI) said in a statement released here they had witnessed "serious lapses at critical levels of the election administrative structure".
"IRI observers believe that the weaknesses observed during the April 12 election process, if not addressed and corrected, could damage the quality and efficiency of the April 19... elections," it said.
Polling was postponed Saturday in the southern oil city of Warri amid unrest. An attempt to retart voting there Sunday morning was delayed after a clash between ethnic militants and the navy, an AFP correspondent said.
At least ten people were killed on polling day -- eight of them in the southeast -- according to an AFP tally of reports from vote monitors.
But with more than 60 million people registered to vote in Africa's most populous country, most independent monitors said that the violence was marginal compared to the spate of riots and murders leading up to the election.
The national coordinator of the Catholic Church's monitors' Chukwuma Ezeala said: "Elections in the north and southwest were basically good."
The head of Nigeria's electoral agency sought to play down the problems.
"The reports that we have received from most parts of the country indicate that voting was for the most part peaceful...voting took place in over 95 percent of areas," Abel Guobadia told reporters.
But he also announced that attempts to rig the ballot in districts of three states had forced the agency to call off polling there and reschedule the elections to later in the week.
As the first results came through from Saturday's ballot it was a see-saw ride for the ruling PDP.
Partial results released in the capital Abuja early Monday showed the party remained on course for a national victory, with 61 of 110 declared lower house seats -- from a total of 360 -- and 51.25 percent of the vote.
But voters switched sides in several vital battlegrounds.
In the north, supporters of Obasanjo's main rival, former general Buhari, were celebrating the All Nigeria Peoples Party's capture of a clear majority of seats in the former PDP stronghold of Kano State.
And in the southwest, at least two states previously loyal to the opposition Alliance for Democracy swung to Obasanjo's ruling party.
"The ANPP did very well, we've changed the democracy of the north completely," exulted Buhari's spokesman Sam Nda-Isaiah, predicting that many more PDP seats would swing his party's way.
But with the vast majority of seats yet to be declared, Obasanjo's spokesman Akin Osuntokun was equally optimistic: "We did very, very well. There were no problems. It was a free and fair election." - Sapa-AFP
President Olusegun Obasanjo's ruling party made stunning gains in the opposition fiefdoms of the southwest, but suffered serious setbacks as his main poll rival forged ahead in the mainly-Muslim north.
While most observers praised Saturday's legislative poll as broadly trouble-free by the standards of Nigeria's bloody history, voting in the southeast was marred by serious outbreaks of violence and attempted fraud.
The elections, Nigeria's first since the end of military rule in 1999 and Africa's biggest ever, were seen as a crucial first test of the country's young democracy ahead of Saturday's showdown for the top job.
Several incumbent politicians were forced out as Obasanjo's People's Democratic Party (PDP) lost out to Muhammadu Buhari's All Nigeria People's Party in the northern state of Kano while gaining ground in the southwest.
Festus Okoye, head of Nigeria's Transition Monitoring Group, said the swing against the status quo could exacerbate the tensions in Nigeria's 36 state gubernatorial races in the last week of campaigning.
"What this means is that some of the incumbents might get desperate if their analysis after this election is that they are not likely to return to power," he said, warning of the risk of increased violence.
Many poll monitors also reported organisational problems that could add to the mood of crisis in many states in the build-up to the April 19 presidential and state governor elections.
US observers from the International Republican Institute (IRI) said in a statement released here they had witnessed "serious lapses at critical levels of the election administrative structure".
"IRI observers believe that the weaknesses observed during the April 12 election process, if not addressed and corrected, could damage the quality and efficiency of the April 19... elections," it said.
Polling was postponed Saturday in the southern oil city of Warri amid unrest. An attempt to retart voting there Sunday morning was delayed after a clash between ethnic militants and the navy, an AFP correspondent said.
At least ten people were killed on polling day -- eight of them in the southeast -- according to an AFP tally of reports from vote monitors.
But with more than 60 million people registered to vote in Africa's most populous country, most independent monitors said that the violence was marginal compared to the spate of riots and murders leading up to the election.
The national coordinator of the Catholic Church's monitors' Chukwuma Ezeala said: "Elections in the north and southwest were basically good."
The head of Nigeria's electoral agency sought to play down the problems.
"The reports that we have received from most parts of the country indicate that voting was for the most part peaceful...voting took place in over 95 percent of areas," Abel Guobadia told reporters.
But he also announced that attempts to rig the ballot in districts of three states had forced the agency to call off polling there and reschedule the elections to later in the week.
As the first results came through from Saturday's ballot it was a see-saw ride for the ruling PDP.
Partial results released in the capital Abuja early Monday showed the party remained on course for a national victory, with 61 of 110 declared lower house seats -- from a total of 360 -- and 51.25 percent of the vote.
But voters switched sides in several vital battlegrounds.
In the north, supporters of Obasanjo's main rival, former general Buhari, were celebrating the All Nigeria Peoples Party's capture of a clear majority of seats in the former PDP stronghold of Kano State.
And in the southwest, at least two states previously loyal to the opposition Alliance for Democracy swung to Obasanjo's ruling party.
"The ANPP did very well, we've changed the democracy of the north completely," exulted Buhari's spokesman Sam Nda-Isaiah, predicting that many more PDP seats would swing his party's way.
But with the vast majority of seats yet to be declared, Obasanjo's spokesman Akin Osuntokun was equally optimistic: "We did very, very well. There were no problems. It was a free and fair election." - Sapa-AFP
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