Johannesburg — Although Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo described last weekends national assembly ballot as rig free and "very successful", his competitors are crying foul.
Obasanjos leading presidential challenger, former military head of state and retired army general, Muhammadu Buhari, told a news conference on Wednesday: "What happened on Saturday April 12, in many parts of the country, fell short of the minimum requirements for a free, fair, credible and transparent election."
In response to alleged vote rigging in the national assembly polls, Buhari and other opposition presidential candidates threatened Wednesday to launch a campaign of "mass action" if there was evidence of cheating in Saturdays presidential and gubernatorial polls.
Buhari said the opposition "would like to emphasise that any repeat of the fraud of April 12, a fraud we have rejected in totality, will result in mass action and its consequences, which no one can today foresee." He gave no details about the threatened action.
Results already declared, after the national assembly election, show a poor performance by Buharis party, the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), which is in second place, trailing far behind Obasanjos governing Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
With three-quarters of the parliamentary vote results announced, Obasanjos PDP has gained a commanding lead. The governing party looks set to clinch an outright majority in both chambers of the national assembly, the 109-seat Senate and the House of Representatives, which has 360 seats.
But Buhari, standing against Obasanjo - a former fellow general and military head-of-state - stopped short of announcing that he would pull out of the presidential poll on April 19. "We are not going to boycott the elections on Saturday. We are going to tell Nigerians to turn out and vote and defend their vote," Buhari told the BBC, Wednesday.
However, said Buhari, they intended to challenge in court the national assembly results in some areas. This move was backed by other opposition parties at a meeting held in the capital, Abuja, Tuesday.
Obasanjos campaign spokesman, Akin Osuntokun, rejected opposition claims of vote rigging last Saturday. Interviewed on the BBC, he said: "Its unfortunate really because theres no need for it. There is no basis for their rejection [of the results]. No fair-minded person would suggest that the elections were anything but free and fair."
"I will not accept defeat. I will not accept defeat, because we have enough evidence that the (legislative) elections have been rigged. I want a rerun wherever the results have been changed. If Nigerians want a viable democracy, then they have to insist on a rerun of the elections," Buhari told the BBC.
But the Independent National Electoral Commission (Inec), which organised the election, rejected the opposition call for a rerun of the parliamentary poll countrywide.
"On their demand for the cancellation of election results, we made it clear that the results announced by returning officers cannot be cancelled," was the response from the Inec chairman, Abel Guobadia.
He told reporters the opposition would have to make a case by producing evidence of vote rigging. The electoral commission has acknowledged its chaotic organisation of the election and ordered a re-vote in some areas, because of fraud and violence.
At least 12 people have died in violent clashes since election day. Polling for powerful state governors will take place Saturday, alongside the presidential ballot in Nigeria, a federal republic.
Buhari was flanked at his news conference, Wednesday, by other prospective presidential candidates. He said the ANPP was consulting a number of opposition parties, with a view to a broader alliance ahead of the weekend vote.
Blackmail and sabotage
Obasanjos campaign media chief remarked that local and international election observers had not found fault with the poll. He accused the Nigerian opposition of "cheap and deliberate blackmail" and "sabotage, to undermine the system and set the stage for crisis".
Osuntokun said he was confident that the oppositions warning of mass action would not jeopardise Saturdays ballot, adding: "They have not said they will not participate (in the election). They have not said they are going to boycott elections."
Asked by the BBC whether Obasanjos was worried about the oppositions rejection of the parliamentary poll results, Osuntokun responded, laughing, and said "Oh, no, no, no. If you know him, its difficult to shake him or for him to be rattled."
He described Obasanjo as "confident, courageous and brave," adding: "I must say you require those attributes to govern Nigeria now. He is not easily worried or rattled. Thank God for that, because he would have been a psychological wreck by now!"
Obasanjo was elected to power as a civilian president in 1999, after 15 years of military rule in Nigeria. He is hoping to win a second and final four year term in office after Saturdays poll.
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He was the first military leader in Nigeria to hand back power to a civilian administration, in 1979, and was hailed as a soldier-democrat for the gesture. Obasanjo, a Christian, hails from the largest south-western tribe, the Yoruba.
Buhari is a Muslim, from the Fulani ethnic group, with his power base in the north. He was ousted after two years in office in a bloodless military coup in 1985.
Both are soldiers turned statesmen and new-look democrats. Obasanjo and Buhari are two of almost 20 contenders in the race for the presidency.
Two other retired army officers from the Igbo-dominated east, Ike Nwachukwu and the former secessionist Biafran rebel leader, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu - who led the Nigerian civil war from 1967-1970 - are also contesting the presidential election on Saturday.
Northern, mainly military Hausa-Fulani leaders have governed or ruled Nigeria for most of its 43 years since independence from Britain in 1960.
Nigeria is Africas most populous nation and the worlds eighth biggest petroleum producer. But the countrys development has been blighted by economic mismanagement, corruption and poverty and plagued by ethnic, religious and political strife.
