Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-05-23-Speech-3-284"
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"en.20070523.21.3-284"2
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".
Madam President, Commissioner, honourable Members, the situation in Nigeria is of great significance for the stability of West Africa and, ultimately for that of the continent as a whole.
Nigeria’s future government will have numerous challenges to face; one fundamental area of concern will be the need to monitor efficiently the resources allocated to the federal states, and another will be the continuing insecurity in the Niger Delta.
The EU should support Nigeria as it faces these challenges, stepping up its efforts to strengthen responsible governance and democracy and promoting respect for human rights in Nigeria. It must involve itself in these areas in cooperation with Nigeria and on the basis of that country’s government’s unequivocal consent.
The Presidency will therefore continue to keep a watchful eye on developments in Nigeria.
The latest elections in Nigeria turned out very disappointingly, as the Council indicated in its statement of 27 April; there were numerous irregularities and acts of violence, with up to 200 people being killed and many more than that injured or intimidated, and the Council expects the persons responsible for these acts of violence to be called to account for their actions. It is fortunate, at any rate, that there was no evidence in these elections of religious or ethnic conflicts.
The elections took place within an improved legal framework, with substantial funds being made available, and all this led us to expect that the 2007 elections would pass off better than those held in 2003. While we are still awaiting the final report from the EU’s election observation mission, initial assessments give credence to the suspicion that the 2007 elections were an even more badly run affair than their predecessors in 2003.
The main problems were in the lack of organisation exemplified in particular by the late opening of polling stations, the lack of ballot slips and the lack of secrecy around the voting process. What was even more serious was that, in addition to widespread irregularities, there was visible evidence of considerable electoral fraud.
Another major problem with the elections was that failure to publish detailed results from them, with, moreover, those results that were available not being calculated in comprehensible ways, and we should now ask the Nigerian authorities to publish the results with the figures broken down according to the polling stations where the votes were cast, for this is the only way in which the election system can be guaranteed to be transparent.
The Council did, however, find positive encouragement in the indications of greater independence on the part of the judicial system during the election campaign, and we hope that this tendency will continue in the post-election period. The lively debates in the privately-owned media before and after the election were also encouraging, and the Council has been impressed not least by the commitment of the Nigerians themselves to the democratic process, in consequence of which the involvement of civil society organisation is, and will continue to be, of very great importance.
The Council has appealed to all the political actors to use peaceful means and to demonstrate an attitude of responsibility by having consistent recourse to the legal channels in order not to disappoint the Nigerian people. We hope that the independent national election commission and other bodies will make haste in producing the evidence that the electoral tribunals require in order to complete their work with the minimum delay possible.
The Council also hopes that the Nigerian state authorities will be sympathetic to the idea of repeating the election process in instances where there is irrefutable evidence of grave electoral fraud.
This is not, however, the time to turn our back on Nigeria – on the contrary; Nigeria’s stability and development matter not only to its own people, but also to Africa as a whole, and, if the Millennium Development Goals are not achieved in Nigeria, we are not going to be able to achieve them in Africa at all."@en1
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