Outgoing President of Nigeria Olusegun Obasanjo has...

Outgoing President of Nigeria Olusegun Obasanjo has been re-elected in the first round of the presidential elections. The fact is confirmed by the election results published by the national independent electoral commission of Abuja.
Until now [16:00, 22 April 2003, Ed.] the results from 764 of the country's 774 town councils have been counted with Obasanjo having already obtained 61.8% of votes cast and at least 25% of the votes in two thirds of the Nigerian Federation, thus satisfying the election criteria for the first round of polling.
Whilst the European Union observer team said the elections in Nigeria were "marred by serious irregularities and fraud in 13 states", two United States-based groups that observed the just concluded presidential/gubernatorial elections, the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the Inter-national Republican Institute (IRI), as well as Nigeria-based Transitional Monitoring Group (TMG), the nation's umbrella monitoring body comprising about 170 human rights and civil society organisations, listed only five states that were marked by "significant flaws" during last Saturday's election.
However, Commonwealth observers gave a more positive assessment saying: "in most of Nigeria a genuine and largely successful effort was made to enable the people to vote freely".