views shared by Nigerian bloggers before, during and after last Saturday’s gubernatorial election.
Moving on to blogging the main Presidential Election, there were at least two informative bloggers who put in their best
to spread the word across the globe. An active blogger, Tayo Odukoya, relays his eye-witness accounts of the D-day in
his blog post of 21 April 2007:
Today is the day many people have been waiting for. It's the day of the Presidential Elections in Nigeria,
and hopefully the day in which the fate of Nigeria's future will be changed, for better. I just returned from
the election booth (if it can be called a booth) some minutes ago. It was the same place where I registered
to vote a few months ago. It took two minutes from the time I got there to the time I cast my vote, and
that was it ... yes it was as simple as that. Here are my observations.
The first observation was that the voting spot was quite devoid of people.
My voter's card was marked with an X, my name was ticked in the register, I was given the ballot papers
and told to proceed to an isolated table in a corner some distance away. I opened the ballot papers and
ALAS! I made another observation. There were no names on the papers. All that existed were party
names. Although this had earlier been announced by the INEC (for reasons probably not unrelated to the
Imo state gubernatorial election saga), I was still caught aback.
There have been reports of people absconding with ballot boxes (bags) and some disturbances here and
there. Also, this morning there was an attempted sabotage on the INEC office in Abuja. Thankfully, it
failed.
The next few days will probably be a beehive of activities and post-election drama.
Similarly, another US-based blogger (Adaure Achumba) in her post of 21 April 2007 was able to gather and collate
available reports for the day. One can tell from the tone of her message that Nigerian politicians were unrepentant of
their old rigging tricks:
It has been a very long day today and honestly, I have decided, since the ruling People's Democratic Party
(PDP) has already concluded the manner in which this election will turn out and therefore voted for me,
11 / 20
Convention