Fresh concerns over rigging in elections
From Tristan McConnell in Kano, Nigeria

Nigeria's elections have swung from chaos and confusion to violence and back over recent weeks as President Olusegun Obasanjo's ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) does all it can to hold on to power. Curfews, shootouts, ballot box theft, murdered police and militant attacks have been added to the more common electoral malpractice of ballot-stuffing and falsifying results.

Local estimates put the number of those killed in violence during the election period at close to 200, double the number for the last elections, in 2003.

Late on Friday even the PDP vice-presidential candidate was not safe from the violence - his residence came under fire. The chaos was compounded by the announcement by the electoral commission that 60 million ballot papers had not arrived, throwing yesterday's polls into disarray.

Most of Nigeria's 140 million citizens live on less than $1 a day, almost one in every 100 children will die before their first birthday and the country is lying at 159th out of 177 countries on the United Nations' Human Development Index.

Thanks to huge levels of corruption, this misery persists despite the country's annual oil revenues of more than $40 billion: a staggering $380bn is thought to have been stolen from or squandered by the state since Nigeria gained independence from Britain in 1960.

In the wake of fraudulent and violence-marred local elections last weekend there were some murmurings of discontent from US and European Union observers, but Britain, which earmarked £80 million in aid for Nigeria this year, has remained publicly silent, preferring to use "quiet diplomacy".

This does not impress many Nigerians. "A lot of the international community will be very diplomatic, but if they are too diplomatic the message can be lost," warned Dr Jibrin Ibrahim, director of the Centre for Democracy and Development.

A leading coalition of Nigerian civil society organisations called for last weekend's local election results to be annulled in 10 states, nine of which were won by the PDP.

President Obasanjo admitted there had been flaws, and called for a crackdown on electoral fraud - spectacularly disingenuous, given that his ruling PDP has been blamed for much of the violence, intimidation and rigging that has characterised the elections.

"The world is watching us and we cannot afford to disappoint ourselves, our friends and the world," he added.

The world may be watching, but that is all it is doing, Ty Shehu, a young cameraman working in the capital, Abuja, said. "You Britons and Europeans come here to observe, you see what happens but you say nothing and we suffer," he said. "Why do you never do anything?"

According to Human Rights Watch, part of the problem is low expectations among the international community, who pay little attention to the reality of a functioning democracy, simply seeing it as something of a miracle that Nigeria does not simply fall apart altogether.

One frustrated Nigerian commentator said: "There is a great anger and a great sadness that outsiders do not assess the elections as objectively as Nigerians would want them to It is an organised criminal organisation that has captured the state, but nobody will say anything because nobody wants to disrupt the oil trade."

Some 2.5 million barrels of oil are pumped out of the Niger delta every day, making the country Africa's largest oil producer and of increasing importance to the energy-hungry West. But Nigeria's endemic corruption and violence affects production - recent estimates say up to 300,000 barrels per day are stolen, while disruption caused by armed militant groups have caused oil production to drop by one-fifth.

The election results are expected by tomorrow evening and are likely to be greeted with more violence and protracted legal proceedings - last week opposition candidate Atiku Abubakar signalled his intent to challenge the results even before the vote was held. Abubakar only made it on to the ballot sheet at the last minute after the Supreme Court ruled he was eligible to run despite being under investigation accused of stealing $125m from state coffers.

Shortly after that ruling last Monday he joined other opposition leaders in calling for local elections to be annulled and threatening to boycott yesterday's polls if they were not. But in the end, the opposition "granite alliance" cracked and all candidates ran individually.

Nigeria's credibility as a democratic country is at stake in this election, but so is that of the West's relationship with developing countries in Africa.