Millions turn out in Africa's biggest vote

Tens of millions of Nigerians queued yesterday to cast their ballots in landmark elections to defend their new voting rights and hoped, against the odds, for change.

President Olusegun Obasanjo, a former military ruler from the south, is expected to be declared the winner today after Africa's biggest ever election, just four years after military rule ended in the country. If predictions are correct, he will return to office, seeing off a weak challenge from former northern coup leader, retired general Muhammadu Buhari, and 18 minor candidates.

"People believe we have done well," Mr Obasanjo said, as he voted early yesterday at a polling station near his home in the south-western town of Abeokuta.

In fact, opinion about the retired general's performance over the past four years is mixed. Under Mr Obasanjo, political freedoms lost under the military have returned and there has been a minor improvement in the output of the state power company. But the economy is in the doldrums, corruption and ill-advised spending remain rife, and water supplies, schools and healthcare are all in a state of collapse. But none of the other candidates has managed to offer anything better for Nigerians.

"Who do we have to vote for, really? Politics in this, our country, is a dirty game. But we hope for change. And I have to vote. It is my right," said Afolabi Akinwumi, a 21-year-old accountancy student, too young to vote at the last polls in 1999.

Those elections were run by the military and, as a result, ran reasonably smoothly. But these elections are the first organised by a civilian regime since 1983. The only two other civilian-run elections held in Nigeria since independence were so badly run they gave an easy excuse for the military coups that followed, which is why the good conduct of these polls is so important.

Monitors said that this weekend's polls appeared to be better organised, save in the troubled south-east, controlled by Mr Obasanjo's Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), where ballot boxes and papers failed to show up in many towns. In last weekend's parliamentary polls, high voting figures were announced for several places in the south-east where none had in fact taken place.

By the close of polling on Saturday, however, no major violence had been reported, despite fears, particularly in the northern city of Kano and in Abeokuta, that some of the losing candidates for state governorships might organise disturbances. Last Thursday, the spokesman for the state governor in Abeokuta claimed his boss could only be defeated by rigging and warned that "the reaction [of his supporters] may be violent".

A few miles south of Abeokuta, Adisa Ajekunle, the 62-year-old secretary of the community association in the village of Arigbajo, said he had voted against the state governor and hoped other voters would follow suit.

Standing beneath a half-built water tower started eight years ago and abandoned a few months later, he said: "The governor of this state has not done anything for us. We have no water. The electricity is not stable. There are no jobs. The hospital has no medicines. All over Nigeria we are voting for change. We all want a better life."