Nigeria's most high-profile armed group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend), said late on Monday it will shortly resume attacks on oil pipelines in the south of the country. "In pursuance of our pledge to cripple the Nigerian crude oil export industry, we will resume with attacks on pipelines around the entire Niger Delta, in the coming days," Mend said in a statement emailed to the media.

A bill establishing the Nigerian National Information Technology Development Agency has been signed into law by the President of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo. Called the National Information and Technology Development Act 2007, the law empowers the agency to oversee the development of IT in Nigeria.

Nigeria’s President-elect, Umaru Musa Yar’ adua, began his maiden tour in Africa on Monday. He had already toured Togo, Benin and Niger. The tour, the first since his controversial election win last month, is meant to enable the new leader to strengthen bilateral relations with other African states. Observers and opposition candidates cited several cases of election fraud, violence, stealing, and other malpractices in the polls.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/broadcasts/patterson-ogon.jpgIfieniya Lott, a women's rights activist, and Patterson Ogon from the Ijaw Council for Human Rights speak to Sokari Ekine from Pambazuka News about environmental justice issues in the Niger Delta. As the recent elections have been criticised for widespread rigging, particularly in the Niger Delta region, this podcast reflects on the problems people are encountering and what the future holds. For more information see and Environmental Rights Action.

Nigerian president-elect Umaru Yar'Adua has promised to review the conduct of the disputed April elections that gave him his mandate with a view to delivering better ones in 2011. Local and foreign observers said vote-rigging was so widespread that the elections were not credible, while the opposition has rejected the results. Yar'Adua has repeatedly said he believes he won fair and square.

Journalist Dare Folorunso of state-owned Ondo State Radiovision Corporation (OSRC), was beaten unconscious by several policemen, including a deputy commissioner, at a May Day rally on 1 May in Akure, in the south western state of Ondo. He is now in a coma. A policeman objected to Folorunso’s taking photos and tried to grab his camera from him, although Folorunso explained that he was a journalist. When Folorunso defended himself, other policemen intervened and began beating him.

The massive protests planned by the opposition over Nigeria's disputed elections have failed to materialise. They had hoped to use the trade unions' May day rallies to denounce what they see as election fraud but the rallies went ahead as usual.

Men of the state security services, on Monday 30 April at about 3pm raided the office of the Alliance for Credible Elections (ACE-Nigeria) at Jima Plaza, Garki, Abuja. The heavily armed men, who came in three Peugeot cars, two 206 and a Boxer Expert van, arrested the general secretary of the alliance, Emma Ezeazu.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/302/Nigeria_41150.jpgKola Ibrahim argues that the solution to Nigeria’s hydra-headed socio-political problems lies not with the ballot box but rather with grassroots-led social and political movments from the urban and rural masses.

The contemporary histories of Venezuela, Bolivia, Mexico, Greece and Ukraine have shown that it is independent political actions of the masses that can change the society.

The outcome of the Nigerian elections held in April 2007 have shown that the solution to Nigeria's hydra-headed socio-political problems can only be achieved if the mass of the working people of Nigeria take destiny into their hands and exercise political movement as a counterweight to bourgeois corrupt politics. Politicians cannot be relied upon to resolve the sufferings of the Nigerian working people.

To begin with, the clash within the rank of the ruling elite, especially that between president Obasanjo and his vice Atiku Abubakar, was never based on how to better the lot of the masses, who have been made to swallow the poisonous pills of neo-liberal capitalist economic policies over the past eight years.

In fact, instead, the cause of the rancour between the two is the question of succession. While Atiku claimed to have conceded power to Obasanjo in 2003 so as to regain it in 2007, the Obasanjo camp sees no reason why Atiku, who has served two terms in the presidency, should be 'criminalising’ Obasanjo for going for a third term in office.

The masses were presented with two sides of the same corrupt political arrangement and no genuine alternative. Both the president and his vice have acted together to implement the anti-poor, pro-rich policies of neo-liberalism. Atiku was the chairman of National Council on Privatization (NCP), which oversaw the privatisation of several government corporations and parastatals. Social service provisions were either commercialised or partly privatised. Meantime the masses were made the scapegoats of age-long corruption and mismanagement by the ruling elite via retrenchment, unemployment, unpaid entitlements, including pensions, and inflation.

The president demonstrated that if the nation he rules over could not manage its tertiary education, he could do better. The children of the poor masses who want a good education were told to either a pay Naira500,000 at Bells University's bursary or go to hell. At the same time, hundreds of acres of state farmlands were bought over by the president - or the Obasanjo Library. Followers boast of juicy packages which they try to protect as much as possible.

And whereas the so-called opposition wanted to present itself as an alternative, the past let them down. Nigerians forget the spree of retrenchment of the former AD southwest governments of the likes of Bola Tinubu in Lagos and Bisi Akande in Osun. All opposition groups bow before the almighty neo-liberal economic pills as advocated multilateral agencies of imperialist capitalism – IMF, World Bank and WTO.

Political action could not take into cognisance the plight of the poor people. In an absence of genuine alternatives, the best it could do was to use people's plight to justify their quest for power. This explains why none of them could give reasons for supporting or participating in policies that have deprived the majority. Even Obasanjo has conceded that all those who antagonise his ‘reforms’ could not provide alternatives because they all stand for the same policies.

This situation is underlined in a letter Atiku Abubakar wrote to Obasanjo in early 2006. He stated his intention to run for the presidency and praised Obasanjo for his economic reforms: retrenchment, denied entitlements, decrepit social services, looting via privatization. He promised to continue the same policies.

Neither Atiku nor the so-called opposition have suggested any alternative to neo-liberalism and market economies, rejected by the working people. Ruling class politics of survival of the fittest substitutes for radical political actions of the masses; and the masses taking the political road is feared.

Of course any concession to allow the masses to take independent political action through formation of a working people's party would lead to the diversion of the resources of the country to pro-poor policies: free education, health care, adequate salaries and pension, secure job opportunities and better infrastructures. As these could only be achieved by the stopping corruption and privatisation of national wealth, they would spell doom for corrupt ambitions.

Therefore, the ruling politicians and their estranged counterparts in the so-called opposition - which some elements of the media has wrongly tagged progressives - continue their ruinous politics. These same estranged politicians participated actively in the electoral fraud of 1999 and 2003. Many of them played major roles during the dark days of military absolutism. For instance, Obasanjo was the first head of state to plunge Nigeria to the abyss of debt and economic dislocation. Atiku was head of customs and excise, which was fraught with corruption. The masses, meanwhile, are cajoled with such hollow terms as the rule of law and respect of electoral wishes. But to expect these individuals to genuinely involve working peoples in the political process is an illusion.

The election outcome clearly indicates the futility of relying on any section of the ruling class for a political breakthrough for the people of Nigeria. While the estranged ruling class tried to use mass pressure to force the main ruling PDP party to concede to some of their demands, the ruling class maximised the constitutional flaws and illegitimate rights to authority through for example control of the INEC, the armed forces and part of the judiciary to ensure they did not lose power. Although the majority of voters were disenfranchised by the political machine of the ruling PDP through rigging and violence, the estranged opposition could not mobilise the masses to come and vote.

It is foolhardy for anyone claiming to be from a left-wing background to believe that any political gain can come by the people attaching themselves to the estranged section of the ruling class without undertaking independent, democratic, mass-based and radical political activities.

Many so-called civil society organisations - many of which derive their grants from the imperialist agencies in the West on the basis of maintaining the status quo - continue to be lethargic; instead of seeking to build a political platform of the working people of Nigeria that will seek to dismantle the stranglehold of the capitalist ruling class on our economic and political lives.

It is important to draw out lessons from last week’s farcical general election for the working masses.

First, given the present constitutional and political arrangements, the corrupt capitalist ruling class will continue to recycle itself in power, irrespective of mass opposition.

Secondly, confining the masses within a neoliberal economic framework will continue to deprive the masses of the political will to undertake independent political action.

Thirdly, in order to breakthrough this quagmire, the masses must build a fighting political alternative that is economically and politically different from corrupt opposition politics, and democratically organised from the grassroots to the national level.

Fourthly, it is erroneous for the leaders of working class organisations to believe that by confining themselves to so-called civil or legal means, that they can assume political control. Only by taking to the streets, along with other mass political actions, can they force the ruling class to abdicate power. And political alternatives must be linked to the daily struggles of the masses for democratic rights, including the right to free and fair elections.

For these reasons, mass organisations and their leaders must reject last week’s nonsensical general elections. They must immediately call for the reconstitution of the electoral body, a re-run of all elections, and convocation of a Sovereign National Conference. This should draw its membership democratically from mass organisations: trade unions, market men and women associations, student movements, civil societies and ethnic nationalities, which shall reconstitute the political and economic agenda of the country.

And this must not mean supporting other corrupt politicians. Rather it is a step towards building a mass struggle that will culminate in the reconstitution of the country in favour of the working masses.

Civil society organisations and social movements must come together and call the people to the street to take their destiny in their own hands. They must convoke a general summit of all pro-working peoples organisations, to be spear-headed by the trade unions, with the aim of forming a working people's party that will serve the interest of the masses.

I propose a week of political protests around the country to include mass processions, leafleting, rallies and mass meetings as soon as possible. The masses must fight for a democratic socialist Nigeria, where the resources of the country are used not in the interests of the already rich few, but in the welfare interests of the masses.

* Kola Ibrahim is a student activist from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, email: [email][email protected]

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Blogs for African Women (BAWo) has taken hold of the Nigerian blogging spirit to strengthen women's activism. Oreoluwa Somolu, BAWo's founder, sees blogging as a way to get women 'hooked on technology', and gain important skills for community and NGO leadership at the same time. Networking for Success, BAWo's second initiative getting women into the blogosphere, has just been awarded an Harambee small grant to increase BAWo's collaboration capacity.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/authors/ken_banks.jpgKen Banks, founder of kiwanja.net, explains the idea and history behind FrontlineSMS – a technology that was used by an organisation, Human Emancipation Lead Project (HELP) to monitor the Nigerian elections.

An idea is born
The FrontlineSMS concept came rather suddenly a couple of years ago during one rainy Saturday evening in Cambridge, UK, a long way away from the country that inspired it. The idea now seems like an incredibly simple and obvious one, but it took its time to dawn on me.

A few months earlier, in the autumn of 2004, I was working in South Africa and Mozambique with a South African NGO, Resource Africa, on a contract with the oldest international conservation organisation in the world – Fauna & Flora International.

We were looking at ways national parks could better communicate with local communities – something which has traditionally been rather problematic – and the project I was working on at the time had a specific technology angle.

I was already working on another mobile phone project. With SMS usage just beginning its astronomical climb, it seemed like an obvious tool to consider. Things were beginning to happen back in 2004, but it was early days in the mobile revolution, particularly in developing countries. So, as a starting point in the solutions evaluation process, local companies were asked to put in tenders to help develop a service, and existing services were trialled and tested.

There were two specific issues which, several months later, became central in the thinking behind FrontlineSMS.

Firstly, everything we were looking at was web-based. This was fine for a parks authority, and fine for this particular project. But I’m always looking for ease of replication and scale, and I didn’t see the perfect solution as being a purely web-based one.

Secondly, everything we were looking at was one-way – top down if you like – and I had trouble with this. The parks could send stuff down to the community, but the community voice was silent. After a short period of research and evaluation, a trial was started with a web-based service. For me these two external issues remained unresolved.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/302/41128b.jpgFrontlineSMS, which finally addressed these shortfalls was launched in 2005. It was the first text messaging system to be conceived, designed and written firmly with the needs of the non-profit sector in mind.

Up until then, the majority of systems did not take into account the nature of non-profit work, nor the specific conditions – financial and physical – which many work under. Since the non-profit sector isn’t considered fertile ground for most for-profit companies, this wasn’t surprising. The software was picked up by a number of news sites, and trials began. Most were small-scale grassroots initiatives, however, and little news got out to the wider community.

But then came the Nigerian elections…

In African election terms, it doesn’t get much bigger than the Nigerian elections. Two months ago, back in February 2007, I was contacted by the Human Emancipation Lead Project (HELP) Foundation, a Nigerian group interested in establishing a team of volunteer election monitors to report on their forthcoming presidential elections.

HELP are a non-profit group of young professionals in Nigeria, advocating for social change through good governance. Their goal is to encourage the Nigerian electorate to participate in the electoral process. Since 2005, HELP has been in the forefront of employing available mass communication technologies in their work.

According to the group, the 2007 elections presented a 'vital opportunity to truly change the cause of things for good for the common Nigerian by ensuring that a transparent and acceptable general election is conducted'. With the proliferation of mobile technology in Nigeria, the group chose SMS as their communications medium.

Their initial search for a software and hardware solution led them to a series of mobile guides published by MobileActive, a global network of people, tools, projects and resources focused on the use of mobile phones for activism, campaigns, and civic engagement.

One of the guides specifically deals with elections and voting, and FrontlineSMS was featured in the guide as a tool worth considering. Two months before the presidential elections were due to be held, HELP contacted me and asked for kiwanja.net’s help.

As with many organisations looking to use text messaging for the first time, they were confused over issues of available solutions, short codes, licenses to operate, costs, applicability and ease of adoption. As an organisation with little or no budget, all of my services were offered for free. I still need to work on that business model!

HELP installed FrontlineSMS onto a single machine, obtained a phone and a new SIM and began their tests. There were local elections planned in the weeks leading up to the presidential elections, and they were to be used as a dry run. During the testing process I was in occasional contact with their team, but I generally left them to it. FrontlineSMS is designed to be a simple, works-out-of-the-box solution and require little or no support. Other than a couple of emails and the odd call at 3 o’clock in the morning, HELP managed to take the software and run with it with little help. The local government election monitoring was a success. The main event now loomed.

Next was the launch of a website – – where HELP promoted their work under their 'Network of Mobile Election Monitors of Nigeria' (NMEM) banner. The site’s primary purpose was to encourage the general public to register as volunteers, and tell them how they could engage in the process. Individuals registered their mobiles by texting their name, location and polling station to the new NMEM election monitoring hub. Each volunteer was then registered on the FrontlineSMS system.

On election day itself the volunteers were asked to send in two reports – the first to contain details of when the polling station opened, voter accreditation and the ballot box delivery times. The second was due when the polls closed and was to contain information on the result, counting processes, turnout and general conduct. Things were slowly falling into place.

Up until now, I was generally oblivious as to how things were going in Nigeria – I was just quietly getting on with my other work at Stanford. The first news I received that things had gone so well was an email which landed in my inbox around midday on Tuesday 17 April, which came with an accompanying press release. HELP were now ready to monitor the main election, and it was just four days away. The press release was for immediate circulation, so I put on my PR hat and started shooting mails off to my various friends, contacts and acquaintances in the social mobile world. One wrote for the BBC.

On the Thursday morning I woke to find that I’d missed seven calls on my UK mobile. On checking my email, I realised that the calls were from the BBC World Service. I also had an email from one of the BBC website technology editors. After some frantic conversations, I provided them with contact details for the Nigerian team. I could answer the BBC’s technical questions, but the real story was NMEM’s and I was keen for them to have the chance to profile their work themselves.

For the rest of the day I watched as more and more sites picked up on the story, hoping that the BBC would manage to make contact. Friday was the last chance – once the weekend passed it would no longer be a story. Perhaps, more importantly, if the BBC did manage to get the story out then suddenly there was much greater potential to recruit infinitely more volunteers.

I got up at 6am on the Friday morning – 2pm in the UK – in case the BBC had mailed and needed any final information. I needn’t have bothered – the story was already up.

The next time I spoke to HELP was on the Saturday, just after the polls closed. Despite general disquiet about the overall election process, they were very happy at the response to their call for volunteer monitors.

What’s more, FrontlineSMS worked exactly as they hoped. A result all round – after all, this hadn’t been attempted in Nigeria before - and was maybe a first in Africa?

HELP are now working through their data which will be presented to EU monitors and other monitoring groups. Sadly, in this particular case, problems with the electoral process are already well documented.

In their initial report, released a few days after the polls closed, NMEM commented:

'As has been highlighted by both local and international observers, the elections in Nigeria leave little to be desired.'

However, amidst the widespread report of fraud and rigging there were pockets of hope. In communities like Ibiono Ibom in Akwa Ibom State, 80 per cent of the SMS received indicated calm, orderliness and a free and fair exercise.

The same was indicated in reports from Kano GRA in Kano State, and Ward 3 & 4 in Calabar Municipality of Cross River State, among others. We believe that these communities should be identified and commended as an encouragement to others to imbibe fair play and transparency in subsequent elections.

It should be noted that most international observers were trained and equipped to spot and report in places where things did not go as they should. They were further sent to major urban areas where most of the heavy rigging took place.

Our observers, on the other hand, were instructed to report on everything, both the good and the bad. As a result, we documented many remote, rural communities where polls were orderly, materials arrived on time and polls were relatively free and fair.

In total, over 11,000 messages were received from the volunteer monitors, a great response.

NMEM are now looking at how SMS can be used to engage Nigerians in the everyday political process.

For its part, FrontlineSMS was just a tool in the process. It doesn’t do anything on its own, but it does empower. It was NMEM who had the mission, NMEM who had the passion and NMEM who had the commitment to drive their vision forward. NMEM also found FrontlineSMS, and they took the software and ran with it. Anyone else can do the same.

Kiwanja.net believes that all non-profits, whatever their size and wherever they operate, should be given the opportunity to implement the latest technologies in their work, and actively seeks to provide the tools to enable them to do so.

* Ken Banks is founder of kiwanja.net.

www.kiwanja.net
www.frontlinesms.kiwanja.net

* Please send comments to [email protected]

What sense can one make of the ‘result’ of the Presidential election in Nigeria?

Local and most foreign observers are united that the elections were ‘fundamentally flawed’. The Coalition of Domestic NGOs, CSOs and Think Tanks, under The Transition Monitoring Group, TMG, that deployed 50, 000 monitors across the country has not only condemned the widespread irregularities variously reported about the election it has gone further than any other group of monitors by categorically calling for a cancellation of the results and a rerun of the vote.

The two leading Opposition candidates, retired General Muhammadu Buhari (ANPP) and embattled Vice President Abubakar Atiku (AC) and other presidential candidates (there were 24 of them!) immediately rejected the results and have declared that a new president cannot be sworn in on May 29 based on the result announced on Monday because they believed the elections were massively rigged in favour of the ruling party’s and President Obasanjo’s anointed Successor, Alhaji Umar Musa Yar ‘Adua.

The losing candidates have left open their options for taking on the PDP and addressing their grievances including using the courts, public pressure, protests and international opinion.

On its part the PDP and President Obasanjo and the Electoral Commission have reacted not triumphantly but by conceding that there were ‘problems’ (understatement indeed!)with the conduct of the vote but they insist that the shortcomings were not sufficient to nullify the officially declared outcome.

So far there has not been much surprise in the reaction of the various interested parties including the sporadic violent reactions in opposition strongholds where voters felt that the declared result was not in accordance with their wishes. They burnt down houses, offices and other property belonging to members of the ruling party or suspected electoral officers or members of the public just caught up on the wrong side. Soon after the security forces move in and some calmness is restored. It is almost like the authorities were planning for a short period during which the frustrated voters can vent their spleen.

So what next? How long will these controversies last? And what long term impacts will they have on the body politic of the country?

In a game that will mostly be based on ‘wait and see’ the government has more time on its hand and can afford to wait. If the Opposition chooses to go to the courts the matter will definitely be bogged down in procedural issues that may not be decided by the 29th of May when the new President will be sworn in. As it happened after the last, also very controversial election in 2003, a final verdict on the election may drag on to the Supreme Court and probably take the next three years or more and it will not have any political impact or even a legal difference.

Should they choose to go on the streets it may not yield any immediate political benefits too but definitely create more chaos, destruction and even more deaths for their supporters and innocent members of the public?

They also have to consider the reality of the power relations. Opposition will only be able to get away with public disorder and impunity in areas where they are most popular. Why make ungovernable places that are already sympathetic to you like Lagos, Kano for example.

Would you not be inviting the government to declare state of emergency and Direct PDP rule in those pockets of places where the opposition is actually in power? How will that play out with elected opposition candidates from those `areas? The critical Niger Delta has been disenfranchised for a long time that stealing their mandate again is just routine. And now they can even claim one of them is finally in Aso Rock since the new Vice President is from the Niger Delta.

The last time Nigeria had a free and fair election was June 12 1993 and the Military dictator, the Gap-toothed fiendish General I.B. Babangida and his regime annulled the result. National protests and international isolation followed forcing IBB out of power but the winner, Chief MKO Abiola, never regained his victory. Instead another military regime even more brutal than IBBs followed and Abiola died in prison. When Abacha was aided to his death in leisure the same Generals organized Abiola’s`death in prison by choking on tea served to him in the presence of a ‘visiting’ (or was it supervising?) delegation of Senior US officials including Susan Rice`, Clinton’s Assistant Secretary of State for Africa., Susan Rice!

The June 12 struggle that was a national campaign became isolated as a Yoruba affair in spite of the fact that Abiola would have won even without votes from Yoruba Land. Obasanjo was one of the scheming Generals who denied Abiola his mandate. Other Generals rewarded his betrayal of democracy by making him President after Abacha. And they are all now complaining about him.

The situation is different now. Neither Buhari nor Atiku can claim the same National mandate and popularity as was claimed for Abiola. They are also unable to transform the frustration of the voters into a sustainable popular struggle. A military coup is more or less out of the picture. They cannot accuse Obasanjo of favoring his ethnic group or his religious faith. So all the fault lines of Nigeria's politics are safe.

Just as the Generals gave Nigeria a President who was Yoruba in 1999 but not necessarily the preferred candidate of the Yoruba people Obasanjo has given us a President who is Hausa-Fulani Muslim but cannot be Hausa-Fulani President.

The sadness of it all is that I believe that Yar’ Adua could still have won, may be not in such ridiculous margins. But the PDP has made it look like there were no good `reasons why many Nigerians would have voted for him given the limited choice they had of really effectively choosing between three candidates. One a former General and the other a former Custom Officer and Yar ‘Adua, the only civil civilian who also had a reputation for running a decent administration in his state and also one of only a handful of the 36 state governors not known or believed not to be corrupt.

Obasanjo has `helped` Yar Adua to the gate of Aso Rock he cannot cohabit with him in it. It will now depend on him how he shoulders on. It will take more than his initial reconciliatory statements to his ``worthy opponents`` for the controversies and the credibility deficit with which he was anointed to settle.

Obasanjo turned against those who facilitated his entrance into that bastion of power therefore he cannot expect that he would be driving Yar Adua from behind. Proxy politics like opposition ganging up have both never really worked in Nigeria. One of the first things Yar Adua has to do with immediate effect is to unlearn some of his benefactor’s worst ways of doing things. Politics is about persuasion not conquering your opponents.

The International Election tourists otherwise known as Observers or Monitors will already be on their way to the next election in some other country by now, cutting and pasting, on their high powered laptops, as they go. Democracy in any country can only be guaranteed by the peoples of that country not any group of outsiders no matter how well-meaning. EU, NDI, Madeline Albright, Common wealth and whoever can say all they will their governments are not about to impose sanctions on Nigeria (not while the oil is still flowing) and their businesses are not going to withdraw under Yar Adua (they bdid not under Abacha) so it is really up to Nigerians to fight to make their interests relevant to their political dispensation as they confront an undemocratic civilian government and equally non democratic opposition political parties whose only ideology is `its our turn to chop`

* Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is the Deputy Director for the UN Millennium Campaign in Africa, based in Nairobi, Kenya. He writes this article in his personal capacity as a concerned pan-Africanist.

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

In the aftermath of what observers called "seriously flawed" presidential elections in Nigeria, President Olusegun Obasanjo failed to sign into law a bill that would have strengthened his battle against corruption, reports Media Rights Agenda (MRA). President Obasanjo had 30 days to sign into law the much anticipated Freedom of Information Bill, which has been with Parliament since 1999 and was finally passed by both houses of the National Assembly this February.

The Nigerian electoral commission has declared the candidate of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Umaru Yar’Adua, as the winner of the weekend’s controversial Presidential polls. The 56-year-old Governor of northern sate of Katsina, polled 70 percent of the votes. The former Nigerian military ruler, Muhammadu Buhari, and the Vice President Atiku Abubakar ranked second and third respectively.

On the Wednesday 25th April, 2007 a group of women numbering 300 plus were assaulted by members of the Police Force in Kano State, Tarauni Federal Constituency while staging a peaceful protest to express concern over the denial of the mandate they gave a female candidate (Saida Sa’ad) who contested the National Assembly elections on the platform of Action Congress (AC).

According to close associates the women comprising all ages and dispositions of women assembled at the Oando petroleum filling station in Tarauni off the Maiduguri highway from where they crossed over obstructed traffic. Just as they assembled a group of military men inquired on the mission of the women. Upon satisfactory explanations these military men volunteered to assist the women by offering protection and warding off youths and any unwanted intruders.

30 minutes into the protest, armed Police men arrived and started dispelling tear gas and shooting in the air hoping to disperse the procession. In the ensuing confusion and Saida attempted to get an explanation canisters of tear-gas were blown not too far from her position. Consequently, Saida who is asthmatic collapsed and was eventually rushed to hospital where she was placed on oxygen. She is still on admission. Other supporter numbering 6 were also adversely affected by the tear gas and rough handling by the Police.

The development was aired on the Hausa service of the BBC.

We will keep you posted on the subject

Al-Jazeera reports that Nigeria's political opposition is preparing for mass protests against flawed elections that gave the ruling party a landslide win.Rights groups called the vote that saw Umaru Yar'Adua of the People's Democratic party (PDP) declared president-elect a "charade", asking for the result to be cancelled and new elections to be held.

Troops have intercepted a truck-load of already completed ballots the day before Nigeria's presidential election, the opposition said on Friday, heightening fears the vote will be rigged. The accusation followed widespread abuses and violence in regional elections last week which handed the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) a landslide and prompted opposition parties to declare no confidence in the electoral commission.

President Olusegun Obasanjo has admitted that last Saturday’s elections were not perfect “because no human arrangement or undertaking can be so regarded.” He, therefore, wants Nigerians to improve on the process of elections. He spoke in a nationwide broadcast ahead of the presidential election, and against the backdrop of a warning by Senate President, Chief Ken Nnamani, that the presidential elections might witness worse irregularities.

An opposition boycott threat and bloody clashes with Islamic militants on Wednesday raised tensions ahead of Nigeria's presidential election -- the most closely watched poll since independence. A group of 18 opposition parties said the national election commission should be disbanded and Saturday's presidential ballot postponed until "transparency and fairness" can be guaranteed.

Nigeria holds a presidential election on Saturday that is widely seen as a democratic watershed for this country and the whole of Africa. But two days before the vote there are serious doubts over whether it will be seen as a valid, democratic election. The vote in Africa's most populous state should usher in the first handover from one civilian president to another in a nation deeply scarred by three decades of military rule.