Groups seek new election as Nigeria vote is denounced

ABUJA, Nigeria -- The two leading opposition candidates and the largest independent observer mission denounced the weekend's presidential election yesterday , saying rigging and incompetence had so tainted the process that only a new vote could correct it.

As ballots were still being tallied, election observers and journalists reported numerous cases of ballot-box stuffing, intimidation, and other apparent efforts to skew results in favor of the party of President Olusegun Obasanjo.

The Transition Monitoring Group, a coalition of Nigerian pro-democracy organizations with 10,000 monitors across Nigeria, said the election effectively never occurred in 13 of the country's 36 states. And presidential ballots everywhere lacked serial numbers that might have prevented fraud. Polls opened late, and in many places not at all.

Including state and local votes held a week earlier, the election season was the worst in Nigeria's troubled, eight-year-old democracy, said Innocent Chukwuma, head of the observer group. He called for cancellation of the results, a new election commission, and a convening of the National Assembly .

"That is the only way this country can go forward," he said. "We cannot allow these sham elections to continue."

The election was supposed to produce the first transfer of power between democratic governments in Nigeria's history. Obasanjo is scheduled to step down next month .

Analysts expect Obasanjo's pick for successor, Umaru Yar'adua, the northern governor, to win, mainly because of the election machinery of the ruling party. Yar'adua's leading opponents are Vice President Atiku Abubaker and Muhammadu Buhari. The first results, from Rivers State in the volatile oil-producing Niger Delta region, indicated high turnout and support for Yar'adua.

Senate President Ken Nnamani, a member of the ruling party, has criticized the conduct of the election. He plans to convene the National Assembly in Abuja, the capital, tomorrow .

Several major observer missions are set to issue reports today .

Former U S secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright, chairwoman of the Washington-based National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, a nonprofit organization, said the quality of elections is deteriorating.

"In a number of places and in a number of respects, the electoral system has failed the Nigerian people," Albright said in an interview in Abuja. "The trend line on elections is not going the right direction."