Black Looks

Saturday 21st April – comment on NigieraVillageSquare:

It’s 3:30pm now and ALL over my area in the Abuloma axis of the Port Harcourt of Rivers State, there is NO ELECTIONS taking place.

I hear on TV and Radio that INEC has cancelled the Senatorial elections but that the Presidential would go ahead, but as far as can be seen now, there is absolutely NO VOTING in my axis.

4.35pm: Yenagoa (Bayelsa State) following the attack on government buildings yesterday by militants – they appear to have managed to rescue some of their comrades. My friend who is an activist with the Ijaw Commission for Human Rights has not been able to vote because his station is closed. Many polling stations are not open and where they are there is a very low turn out. Fighting between militants and Nigerian army took place earlier today in Okrika, Marine Base and Ogbakari (Rivers State). Again turn out is low and polling booths are not open. No one seems to know what is going on – I think maybe the cell phone network is overloaded as I have been trying all day to contact people.

5.10pm: Minna (Niger State) Doesn’t appear to be any problems in Minna itself – contact is apathetic due to foregone conclusion!

6.30pm: Degema including Abonnema (Rivers State) – voting cancelled.

7.00pm: Delta State – Some ballots papers do not have serial numbers just 00

More Updates if and when

UPDATES:

I managed to vote this afternoon…and there was nothing like secret balloting. We simply voted in the open and anyone who cared could check to see whom you voted for. Many folks could not vote because registers containing their names were not available.

Recieved at 7.35pm from Benin City.

Electoral officers did not show up in some polling stations as at 2:30 PM in parts of Benin City .

Unfortunately the Niger Delta has not seen free and fair elections since June 12, 1993. Voting results are often predetermined and because no one checks on the finger printing one man can yield himself to be used as a thumb-printing machine. Could this be why militants stormed the area near the governor’s lodge in Yenagoa yesterday? I cannot say, but what happened last week was daylight robbery of the people’s right to choose their leaders. Violence was widespread. Today people went out to vote in Yenagoa but most of the polling stations did not have ballot papers or boxers.

There was no voting at Agudama, a community near Yenagoa that has nine polling units, for example. The same situation happened in some Local Government areas of Rivers State.

The whole exercise is a farce. What I can’t say is to what extent people will watch this happen. We wait to see the so-called winners address themselves as “excellencies” and “honourables”.

Nnimmo Bassey, Environmental Rights Action (Friends of the Earth Nigeria) casting his vote

Tags: Nigeria; Elections; Niger Delta; MEND