State poll tests depth of Nigeria's electoral reform

By Tume Ahemba

AWKA, Nigeria (Reuters) - One of Nigeria's most politically turbulent states goes to the polls on Saturday to elect a new governor in a vote seen as a test of the country's ability to hold credible national elections in 2011.

The governorship vote in southeastern Anambra state is the first in a cycle of state and federal polls culminating in presidential elections next year.

Observers are hoping Africa's most populous nation can avoid a repeat of the sort of chaos seen during the 2007 elections which brought President Umaru Yar'Adua to power, polls marred by widespread ballot-stuffing and voter intimidation.

Yar'Adua pledged to reform the system before 2011 in the wake of those polls, but electoral reform bills he sent to the National Assembly have yet to be passed into law and analysts question whether much has changed.

"Our elections must enjoy the indelible mark of credibility and acceptability both nationally and internationally ... The Anambra 2010 gubernatorial election is one in a series of rungs in our ladder towards democratic consolidation," Vice President Goodluck Jonathan said late on Thursday.

"This is why we must take the election very seriously and insist that the votes and voices of the electorate remain the final arbiter of who governs this state," he said.

The Anambra election comes amid wider political uncertainty.

Yar'Adua is in his third month in hospital in Saudi Arabia, where he is being treated for a heart condition, and his failure to formally hand over to Jonathan has brought the country to the brink of a constitutional crisis.