NIGERIA NUMBERS GAME

C O N F I D E N T I A L ABUJA 000767 SIPDIS SIPDIS DOE FOR CAROLYN GAY E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/23/2017 TAGS: PGOV KDEM NI SUBJECT: NIGERIA NUMBERS GAME REF: A. ABUJA 766 ¶B. ABUJA 731 Classified By: Ambassador John Campbell for reasons 1.4. (b & d). ¶1. (C) Ref. A and septels will report on the shenanigans which marked Nigeria's April 21 Presidential and National Assembly elections. As we did last week for the vote in Kaduna state (ref. B),we wish here to focus on one particular statistic, overall voter turnout. As we will report in more detail septel, there were significant areas in both northern and southern Nigeria where neither we nor any other international observers saw any voting at all. Where polls did take place, our own observers say overall turnout was not more than 10 percent in the South, and not more than 20 percent in the North. Estimates from the NDI, IRI, EU and others are in the same range. The highest observed turnout we saw in any Local Government Area (LGA) was only about 25 percent, and that only in a few places. ¶2. (C) INEC has now announced what it says were the total votes cast for President as follows: Yar'adua (PDP)--24,638,063 Buhari (ANPP) -- 6,605,299 Atiku (AC) -- 2,637,844 all others -- 1,451,842 -------------- total votes --35,333,048 INEC claims to have registered 60.5 million voters, a number which (as we have reported) we believe is somewhat exaggerated. If, however, this figure is at least approximately correct, the turnout claimed by INEC is close to 60 percent. If the true number of registered voters is lower (as we believe),the claimed turnout is over 60 percent. No observer, either from within this mission or with any of the other embassies and international organizations who were here, saw a turnout this high in any LGA in the country. ¶3. (C) Comment: While our eyeball sense of a turnout in the range of 10 to 20 percent is only the roughest of ballpark figures, neither we nor any other observing organization here believes the total turnout could possibly be as high as, say, 30 percent. This suggests that at least half, and perhaps three-fourths, of the "votes" counted by INEC in the Presidential race were not real. Under the circumstances, we find it hard to describe the event of April 21 an "election." End comment. CAMPBELL