ABUJA, Nigeria — Christian incumbent Olusegun Obasanjo defeated his Islamic rival Muhammadu Buhari and 18 other candidates for the presidency of Nigeria. Both Buhari and Obasanjo ruled Nigeria in the past under a military dictatorship.
The elections commission declared Obasanjo the winner on April 22 after votes from the April 19 election had been tallied. Obasanjo, a professed Christian, garnered over 60 percent of 42 million votes and retained the office of president of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and biggest oil exporter.
The integrity of the election results has been called into question by both native and foreign observers. Foreign observers from the European Union said ballot stuffing, vote miscounting and outright fraud were observed in numerous polling places. Observers charged by the Catholic church to monitor the elections also reported of voting irregularities, some as severe as theft and political assassination, Compass reported.
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