A Nigerian election tribunal upheld the president's declared victory in last year's disputed election, according to a ruling announced yesterday.
A five-judge panel ruled that the case brought by the country's opposition was "plagued by a lack of evidence" and that the election was not significantly undermined by alleged irregularities.
International observers called the April 27 vote that brought Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua to power deeply flawed, but analysts long predicted that a court victory for the opposition was unlikely.
While ballot stuffing was widely observed, Nigeria's election tribunal requires the plaintiff to prove not only that graft occurred, but that it was widespread enough to cause a different outcome.
The opposition challengers, Muhammadu Buhari and former vice president Atiku Abubakar, said they would appeal the tribunal's decision, pushing the ongoing dispute to the country's top court.
In the six-month trial, Nigeria's top two opposition politicians, former military strongman Buhari and Abubakar, introduced evidence they claimed showed ballot rigging so pervasive that the results should be dismissed.
But Yar'Adua's lawyers said the president was the rightful winner, while lawyers for the electoral commission branded the case inconsistent and speculative.
On voting day, armed thugs intimidated voters and stuffed and stole ballot boxes, observers say. Nigerians blamed Yar'Adua's party for a majority of the fraud. Despite that, analysts have said the opposition faces high legal hurdles.
Judges in a similar suit filed by Buhari in 2003 ruled that he had established fraud, but not to such a large extent as to undermine the re-election of then president Olusegun Obasanjo.
Last year, Obasanjo, barred by the constitution from seeking another term, had picked Yar'Adua to run on his party's ticket.
Obasanjo's hand-over of power to Yar'Adua after the vote was the first peaceful transfer of power between elected leaders since Nigeria's 1960 independence from Britain.
Meanwhile, global rights watchdog Amnesty International, in a report issued yesterday, said Nigeria's criminal justice system is "utterly failing" the public and keeps some imprisoned without trial up to a decade.
The report called the system a "conveyor belt of injustice, from beginning to end."
The human rights group said only about 35 percent of Nigerian inmates have been convicted in court.
"The Nigerian government is simply not complying with its national and international obligations when it comes to the criminal justice system in Nigeria and must begin to do so seriously and urgently," Amnesty's Aster van Kregten said.
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