Nigeria's election called "blatantly rigged"

ABUJA, Nigeria — A former chemistry professor hand-picked by President Olusegun Obasanjo won Nigeria's presidential election in a landslide Monday, a vote denounced as deeply flawed by international observers and the opposition.

Umaru Yar'Adua must now fight for credibility in Nigeria, Africa's largest oil producer, where some 15,000 people have died since strict military rule ended in 1999.

Yar'Adua, a 56-year-old Muslim from the north of a country of 140 million people nearly equally split between northern Muslims and southern Christians, has spent most of his working life in academia.

Yar'Adua has vowed to follow the program of Obasanjo, a southern Christian, which includes privatization and opposition to spreading Islamic law outside the north or implementing stringent punishments, like amputations and death for adulterers, in the north.

Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, the 1980s-era military leader who was the runner-up in Saturday's vote, called the outcome "the most blatantly rigged election results ever produced in Nigeria."

During Saturday's presidential and parliamentary votes and a week earlier during elections for state governors and legislatures, electoral officials could be seen inking ballots and shoving them into boxes. The presidential ballots bore no serial numbers, making them easy to mishandle and impossible to track.

In the United States, which counts on Nigeria as a top supplier of oil, the White House expressed concern about reports of election irregularities.

Electoral commission Chairman Maurice Iwu said Yar'Adua won about 24.6 million votes, more than three times the number garnered by Buhari. Some 61 million Nigerians registered to vote. Iwu gave no turnout figures.

Obasanjo, barred from running by term limits, acknowledged that the vote was imperfect, but said Nigerians were nonetheless devoted to democracy.