Nigerians Vote in Presidential Election

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Source: The New York Times

A watershed presidential election in one of America’s top oil suppliers, Nigeria, unfolded peacefully on Saturday, a first for a country with a history of rigged and violent votes in the 12 years since the end of military rule.

Nigerians have never voted before in such favorable conditions, analysts and election monitors said: ballot materials appear to have arrived on time, there were few reports of violence and the registration process before the voting appeared to have gone smoothly.

The implications of the clean vote, for a new democracy still struggling to establish itself after years of dictatorship, are big. Analysts noted that the winner would most likely have a legitimacy denied to his predecessors elected under murky circumstances, including ballot stealing, a fraudulent polling list and the violent intimidation of voters, all features of the last presidential election, the widely denounced 2007 vote.

None of those flaws appeared to be a significant part of the electoral landscape on Saturday. “It appears to be going quite smoothly,” said the leader of the National Democratic Institute’s observer mission, Joe Clark, a former Canadian prime minister, speaking from the Nigerian capital, Abuja.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/world/africa/17nigeria.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all