As predicted by my colleagues, all the aspirants in the race to be the opposition ANPP candidate -bar one- pulled out. Ahmed Sani Yerima of Zamfara state stepped up and announced to the Eagle Square crowd he would not be contesting the election, and everyone followed, even the man reportedly paid by Obasanjo to step up to be a 'spoiler'.
General Mohammedu Buhari said he was "overcome by the sacrifice" made by Sani. Then he let a tiny chink of light in on the whole deal. He said: "I assure you that when the ANPP is in control of this country at a federal and local level, that man will still play a role in the country's future."
Sani is under pressure from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. The head of the EFCC announced on the floor of the Senate in September that Sani was guilty of grossly raiding the state's coffers. Nuhu Ribadu said: "This man does not even send a subordinate to do his work for him, he takes money from the safe himself." Sani said he was the victim of a witch hunt. But of all the aspirants for the ANPP, Sani probably spent the most on his campaign. He has to work out some kind of deal, and Buhari has virtually admitted he will be granted some kind of immunity after the election.
In the end one candidate remained, a no-hoper who will get very few votes. All my colleagues stood and watched intently as each aspirant withdraw. As each one stepped down (one of them called it the 'moving train') my colleagues got happier and happier. Most people here see Buhari as a straight dealing no-nonsense corruption buster. I'm not convinced. There was much slapping of hands and elation at the prospect of Buhari being elected ANPP candidate without an election. The candidates in Eagle Square were leaping around in joy. I wish I'd been there.
"Isn't this better then what happened at the PDP?" one colleague asked. How is it different? There Obasanjo threatened the governors with investigation of their past doings if they didn't step down. It looks as if Buhari has offered immunity from future corruption in pursute of his candidacy.
But now it is clear, this election will probably be dirty, but it will also be violent. On both sides, big men have staked a lot, and if they lose -they lose everything.

The All Nigeria People's Party primary is on today. The latest news is that the candidates have pulled out to back General Muhammadu Buhari, the former military head of state.
Buhari is from the same state as Umar Yar'adua, and is a lot more popular. Even in Katsina state where Yar'adua is governor, Buhari will definitely be the favourite to win, given a free and fair ballot.
And here's the rub. Buhari contended in 2003, which everyone says was the worst case of a rigged election anyone has seen. If Buhari runs again against Yar'adua, it is unlikely the People's Democratic Party will leave it to chance.
The remaining question is who will Buhari pick as his running mate. Yar'adua's pick of Goodluck Jonathan is a surprising one. A friend said: "If they had picked a charismatic South South governor, like Cross Rivers' Donald Duke or Rivers' Peter Odili, as the VP he would have overshadowed Yar'adua. The challenge for the ANPP is to get a credible person from the South South to be a vice president. They will struggle to do that."
I've heard a suggested theory about what they could do. The ANPP recently announced an alliance with the Action Congress, Which is the party started by Vice President Atiku. Someone heard Senate President Ken Nnamani may leave the People's Democratic Party and join the AC.
One colleague said: "A Buhari Nnamani ticket would mean trouble for the PDP."
Such is the situation that most governors are playing both sides. I have heard the Delta State Governor James Ibori, who financed Umar Yar'adua's campaign (and is the man pictured in the photo below, standing on the right holding Yar'adua's hands up. In the large photo you can see how much the other man is gripping his forearm, forcing his hands in the air) has also been funnelling money into the Action Congress.

Umar Yar’adua entered Eagle square and took his seat at the Katsina section of the stands. He looked out to a band of jostling camera men.
“Hold up his hands!” someone shouted from the crowd. James Ibori, standing next to the only governor remaining in the race to become the People’s Democratic Party candidate, took Yar’adua’s hands and held them aloft. The Katsina delegates were jubilant. Voting had not even started yet, but the winner was already clear. That morning every other governor had pulled out.
For two days before, Abuja was busy with arriving delegates. On the eve of the primaries Asokoro was heaving with traffic. Queues of cars were seen entering the grand mansions of the states Abuja headquarters. The Hilton was full of delegates in celebratory mood. In the piano bar a shout of “PDP power cha!” went up. In Zone 4 the money changers were doing brisk business. One delegate was said by cashiers to have left the bureau de change with a million dollars in a Gana-must-go.
The convention started late. Until 3pm there were more security personnel in Eagle Square than there were delegates. The balloons and posters, presumably prepared long in advance, carried only one face. Umar Yar’adua looked down on the venue from every angle. “This is a coronation, not an election” one reporter said. Delegates had been offered a reported N250,000 for their votes.
Foreign diplomats invited to the convention were given passes with the title “foreign chapter” emblazoned on them. This gave journalists the impression they represented the PDP’s branches abroad. It was an impression that was not dispelled when the master of ceremonies announced: “Welcome to the PDP’s foreign chapters. The PDP is a growing party with representation in America and all over Europe.”
South South and South West states arrived first, each delegate from Ogun, Osun, Oyo, and Delta states had a matching costume of wax print. Katsina state delegates did not arrive until just moments before their candidate. The Niger state delegation did not arrive until moments before voting took place.
The two front rows of the Rivers state delegation did not arrive until the last minute either, maybe a clue as to why the convention started so late in the afternoon.
Head of the Governors’ Forum Lucky Igbinedion, revealed they were in a long meeting most of the night persuading the governor-aspirants to stand down, back Yar’adua, and deliver their state’s block votes. The meeting had resumed that morning and ended a matter of hours before the convention began.
A senior staffer of the Jerry Gana campaign said: “We have 11 or 12 states that have indicated they will vote f or us. It is looking like there might be a protest vote against this meddling.”
But Igbinedion was clear the voting would be simply a formality: “There will be no protest vote”, he said.
A Rivers state delegate Told Daily Trust: “We have our leaders and they inform us of how to vote, and we will be loyal to them. As of yet we don’t know how we are voting, but we will know. We have our signs and signals.”
Their leader Peter Odili went into the bullet-proof glass surrounded VIP room with the group of other governors just before 4pm. But later, as the votes were being cast, reporters scanning the president’s box could not see any sign of him.
The president himself had arrived and immediately set off on a tour of the parade ground soaking up applause. It was the grandest entrance imaginable and he got the greatest applause from Katsina state. In sharp contrast Aliyu Gusau slipped in to the presidential box almost unnoticed.
Outside the parade ground the streets were blocked by police, but a large crowd of street hawkers gathered on Amadhu Bello. A Mopol armoured car sped around, clearing the streets for the convoys that delivered the VIPs to the convention. Yar’adua arrived in an armoured jeep with federal government plates, as he passed supporters sung and danced his praises, holding aloft a poster with his face on. They pressed the police security cordon on Shehu Shagari a little too much and police beat them back.
After holding his hands aloft, Yar’adua’s security man shouted “No more cameras! No more photos!”
One photographer responded: “A-ah! Is this how you will rule us?”
The candidates were brought out onto the platform as the voting procedure was explained. Sarah Jibril seized on an opportunity to ask if the delegates could address the crowd for five minutes: “They don’t know us!” she said. She got down on her knees to implore the president to allow it. The stage manager of the event went to the presidential box to ask the president’s response. He swatted him away with a dismissive hand.
Voting started after a long series of speeches about amendments to the PDP constitution which journalists who didn’t have the constitution or the amendments in front of them had little chance of understanding, even if they could hear the words above the distortion of the PA system.
Voting started. The ballot boxes opened and tipped over to show nothing was in them. Delegates were counted out 20 at a time. Many cast their votes purposefully, spending little time in the booth considering their options.
The media were kept 10 metres away from the boxes by a large number of police and civil defence officers. Half way through the voting the lights went out, plunging the venue into darkness. The lights cut out about five times during the night.
After voting some of the 5000 candidates told Daily Trust they had been forced into voting for Yar’adua. One said: “Actually we are scared of the consequences if we don’t.”
As soon as their numbered ballot paper was cast most delegates left Eagle Square, leaving just the security services. “It is like a police convention”, one reporter observed.

Our reporter just came back from the National Assembly... Apparently the electoral act has been amended. The process began and concluded today. So that officially gives another 60 days for registration. Just like that
Crisis seems to have been averted, but to my mind it's still questionable.

It just goes to show how arbitrary the rules are. Without a clear rational or internal logic it is easy for people to proclaim that they have 80 per cent of what they need in one breath and then say they have a quarter in the next and see no contradiction. If you control the rules, anything is possible.

Somewhere in the middle of the voters registration period I asked the national press officer for the Independent National Electoral Commission, Pastor Segun Adeogun, how many people would have to be registered every day for everyone in the electorate to be covered. He said: “Ah, no! That is mathematics. Things don’t work like that here.”
The chairman of INEC Professor Maurice, Iwu at a press conference two weeks ago, accused the press of spreading “laughable lies” about the registration process. The FCT election commissioner Kabiru Ahmed had just told the group of INEC workers and journalists they had already registered 90 per cent of the number registered in 2003.
To rapturous applause he said: “We will be able to shut up shop by December 14th.” He added they had 80 per cent of the registration machines they were allocated. I asked if that was the case why were machines being rotated around polling stations, cutting the time people had to register?
Ahmed said: “Because we only have a quarter of what we need we have to rotate the machines, one between four.”
Professor Iwu said he was pleased. He repeated the figure of 80 per cent.
I stupidly piped up with: “You mean 25 per cent?” He said: “You see! There are some sections of the media who are bent on twisting this. Did not everyone in this room just hear me say there was 80 per cent of the machines delivered? There are some people in the media who are spreading laughable lies about this registration. Why? Because they are working for the people who benefited from the rigging last time. Last election there was a carry-go. There will be no carry-go this time.”
Voter registration began in October and was meant to finish today. The electoral act makes it illegal to have any registration of voters going on within 120 days of the election. We enter that period tomorrow. But even by the Independent Electoral Commission’s own figures only 10 million people have been registered this time out of an estimated electorate of over 70 million.Three weeks ago Professor Maurice Iwu, announced they would be combining the people registered over the last 10 weeks with the register from the election four years ago.
No one I have met says there was an actual election in 2003. It was blatantly rigged, and the register flawed.
A colleague told me he turned up to vote at his polling station in 2003 and didn’t find his name. It had been moved inexplicably to another polling station miles away. There is no travel allowed on election days. People were registered several times and then sold their ballot cards to politicians. Dead people were also registered. I heard the going rate for a voter's card was as low as N20, there were so many in circulation. Many people have moved cities, or died, since then.
INEC’s answer to the corrupted register was a delivery of Direct Data Capture machines, suitcase voter registration computers that take pictures and a thumbprint of the voter. However, a glance at the 2006 budget reveals that no money was given to INEC for voter registration or polling materials. They had to apply for it in a supplementary budget earlier this year.
The money was held up in the Due Process department of the government, INEC said. The cheque also bounced, Professor Iwu complained. These accusations were denied by the government.
Whatever the actual truth is, INEC only ordered 33,000 Direct Data Capture machines. There are an estimated 120,000 polling stations in the country. In the Federal Capital Territory they were given enough machines (eventually) to have one machine between four polling stations. This meant that even if they got a “full complement” of machines on day one –which they didn’t- they would have to rotate the machines around the polling stations. Suddenly a 40 day registration period became 10 days, as everyone has to register at the polling station where they will vote.
A DDC machine in the Federal Capital Territory will stay at a registration centre for 5 days maximum, and then move on to the next one. It is supposed to visit each polling station twice. I tried to find two in the city area and found both had left early. I spoke to a phone credit recharge seller nearby the station. He said: "Yes I registered. It was easy, but only because no one knew about it. Once the people find out its here, there will be queues and it will be impossible." The operators had packed up early because the battery had run out, he said.
INEC claim they “release” the location of the voter registration machines to the press. This is not quite true. We have to come and pick the release up, and it’s not always ready. The list is prepared on Monday, but the machines stay in an area on a Friday to Friday basis. So the machines have already been in an area for two days before we get hold of the list.
On two occasions we received the list late, and it had to be printed the next day. This week the INEC FCT press man said the list was not available because their printer was out of action. Someone said to me: “In the press I only see the list of where the machines were.”
Officially, the next month is to be called “revalidation” where people can come and find their name on the 2003 voters register and tick it off. I have seen no precise details on how this will be done. Does this mean that if you weren’t registered in 2003 you can’t register now? If you can register, what effect does that have on the electoral act?
The figure of 120 days before the election is probably an arbitrary figure and would not make much difference if it was 60 or even seven days, but the fact is that the law states it is so. If registration carries on past today, can the election be annulled if powerful people who control the courts so desire?

The OPEC meeting came to town today. Yesterday the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, the parastatal responsible for importing most of Nigeria’s petrol, diesel and kerosene announced it was doubling Abuja’s daily supply from 60 tankers to 120.
Can you imagine? Nigeria, the fifth biggest oil exporter in the world, hosting an OPEC meeting for the first time ever, and what’s that at the filling station across the road form the Hilton? Oh, it’s a kilometre long queue for petrol.
We’re finding out if the supply has increased to other parts of the country.
NNPC staff in Abuja last week said the queues were because of “panic buying”, not shortages. In Kano they said it was because “tankers were stuck out to sea in a storm”…

“I feel pity for these women,” the nurse in the dark mud brick clinic said. “They are dying because they can’t afford to give birth in hospital.”

I met Soliu at the checking point between FCT and Nassarawa state. Mararaba was its chaotic self, with people loping across the road in between speeding danfo busses, taking drops to work or hanging about selling wares on the street. Managing, I heard someone call it.
Armed with some statistics from the United Nations Human Development Report published this month, we turned off the main road into an area of the sprawl called Sharp Corner, in search of a maternity clinic.
Nigeria, despite having all this oil wealth, has a poor record on ante and post natal maternity care. Out of every 1000 live births 100 babies die before the age of one, and 200 die before the age of five. That’s about 20 per cent of children dying before they can reach the end of infancy. Problems in heath care start before birth. Few women go to clinics during the pregnancy, and according to the UNDP, 80 per cent of the poorest Nigerians will have no trained health professional present when they go into labour. One of the most startling facts contained in the report is there are only 28 doctors for every 100,000 people.
Although we were in the capital city, and not in the “interior”, as Soliu called it, we believed we could find evidence of this poverty here.
Mararaba is 5 kms outside of Abuja. As little as a year ago, Isa told me it was not a very big place, a few shops on the main road to Keffi and a small slum. Now, swelled by demolitions in the Federal Capital Territory, it is part of the giant sprawl of the Abuja satellite towns. Housing is basic and unregulated, water comes from standpipes, and security is non existent. These areas are almost untouched by government, and yet a great deal of the people who live here are civil servants.

We met the director of the Blessed Trinity Maternity Clinic, Dr Chuks Asogwa. His clinic has seen a drop in the number of women coming to give birth there. At Blessed Trinity delivery costs N5000. They used to see two or three every week, but now the number has gone down to about three or four every month. This in part because the Nyanya specialist hospital and the general hospital in Asokoro have started charging only N1000 (just over £3) to deliver a baby.
Dr Chuks said: “Cost is the number one factor affecting where women go to deliver their baby. Some women are going to the general hospitals. We here have to work out deals with our patients where they can pay back the cost of their treatment over time. Other women are going to churches to deliver. You see them one day and they’re pregnant and the next their not. You ask them where they went and they say the church.”
Doctors, he says, are leaving university and joining a waiting list for houseman placements that can last up to a year. “There just aren’t enough hospitals,” he says, “Is it any wonder doctors are moving abroad in such numbers?”
Some women, such as 22 year old Mary-Anne, have come back to the Blessed Trinity clinic. Sitting in a bare room, she holds a newly born girl in her arms, wrapped in a pink fluffy blanket.
Marry-Anne, who works at a video shop in Mararaba, said she came back to the Blessed Trinity because at the state-run specialist hospital she didn’t feel the service was good enough. “They don’t teach me anything,” she said, “they just leave you there, and unless they know you have money they won’t look at you.”
She hasn’t named her baby yet, and in the slightly dirty room, with the marks remaining on the wall from the ripped-out tiles, she looks very weak and tired. But now she will have to work out a payment schedule to cover her medical bills.
We walked a few hundred yards through Sharp Corner to an Apostolic Church. Soliu said: “I doubt anyone would know if a woman died in childbirth in a church. They would never admit it. They could get rid of the evidence and no one would aver know.”
The Mountain of Joy Apostolic, known locally as the Yoruba church, is obviously fairly well off. A large compound holds a hall with mirrored windows to reflect the heat during the day. Junior Pastor Joshua Ajosanni lives in a small bungalow next door.
He said: “We have a Faith Home where we take care of women up to their delivery. If there are any problems we take them straight away to Adoni or Asokoro hospitals. We make sure that they come for prayers three times in a week before we go into prayer and the delivery.”
As we talk, the church’s midwife, Victoria Oladele, walks in. She has some startling information. Of the Church’s 500-strong congregation, 59 have given birth at the church’s ‘Faith Home’ in the last year, that’s over 10 per cent of the congregation. She has two years training as a midwife and ten years experience of delivering in churches. She has been working in Mararaba for three years. She claims she has never lost a mother or a baby, But they won’t show us the records without the permission from the head pastor.
Victoria shows us the faith home clinic. It is two beds and a cupboard, with some plastic bowls and cups on a tray.
“We pray for water!” Victoria says. “There are no drugs or anything. The only thing you can have is faith.”
In just one area of one part of the satellite town we can see a picture; People turning away from costly private clinics for either impersonal care in the state-run specialist hospitals, or opting to give birth in the place that sustains the rest of their struggling lives, the church. Although we have seen is only one example, Soliu and I agree it is probably replicated over and over again across all the satellite towns.
We decide to go further out of Abuja to see what the situation is there. On the road to Karshi, 45kms out of town, it seems that every third building is a church.
We stop at one clinic, but the Doctor is not in. He is working at a private hospital in town. We are led to another clinic, a mud hut with a concrete flood and blue curtains. We find a nurse, 22-year-old Rahila Danjuma, in a dark, cool room. We sit, and through the curtain I can see a woman patient lying on a bed. She had a waxy look on her face.
Rahila is initially uneasy to talk to us. But she starts to speak when we ask her what happens to people who give birth in their own homes.
She said: “Women die because they lose too much blood. They may have to cut the umbilical cord themselves. They do it badly and get an infection, or they have a case of where their placenta can’t be delivered.”
“I pity these women because they are dying because they can’t afford to give birth in a hospital.” She can’t say how many die in this way, and neither can she give figures on how many come to the clinic. “Not many,” is all she can say.
Other people in town tell a different story. We want to talk to some villagers about the subject, but this presents some difficulties.
Soliu says: “You don’t just go up to people and start talking, especially when it concerns women and such things.”
Alhaji Said Makama is a village elder in Karshi. He sits with one of his wives in a room that doubles as a classroom and mosque. Tablets with Qur’anic surahs inscribed on them are stacked up in the corner. We sit on an old mat while one of the Alhaji’s sons translates. “My Hausa is not strong enough,” says Soliu. The room is full of children excited to see strangers. They crowd around us, giggling. As we ask questions Alh. Makama’s wife looks at me intently, but says nothing.
Through his son, Alh. Makama says: “We are well provided for in terms of health here. We have clinics and a hospital, there are no problems here.” But ask him how many children he has and something slightly different emerges. His four wives have had 30 children between them. He leans over to Soliu and says: “Eight of them died.” That’s significantly over the Nigerian average for infant mortality rates.
As we leave Soliu shrugs: “He couldn’t say anything else because he is responsible for his people, and admitting things were bad would be admitting he has failed.”
As we approach the area’s general hospital, outside is a sign that says “Karshi hospital is baby friendly”. By the sign sit four children, selling sachets of ‘pure water’. One boy of about five has a baby strapped to his back.
Inside the hospital we are warmly received, but our questions don’t get far. Giving birth here costs only N500 (£2). The medical director says that poor people do sometimes give birth in their homes, but they provide a good service at the hospital. But they can’t go into any specific detail about numbers as that would mean going into patient files.
The secretary of the hospital’s board inadvertently reveals more than perhaps he should have: “We cannot say anything without clearance from the ministry because it might embarrass the authorities.”
This is a village not more than 30 minutes drive from the capital, and we have heard from a nurse that there are women trying to give birth without assistance from any sort of health professional and dying. A village elder who has lost more children than the Nigerian infant mortality rate finds it difficult to say there is anything wrong with his villages’ health care provision, and the local hospital can’t go into specifics “for fear of embarrassment.”
“Just imagine what it’s like in the interior,” Soliu says.

Fuel queues are back. Since the weekend the lines of people have been steadily growing. On the route to work we passed a filling station that was just opening up. From the way people were dashing to their cars from the shade of trees, I guessed they'd been waiting there for a long time.
It was the Gubernatorial primaries this weekend. And its the presidential ones next weekend. It can't be a coincidence that these things are happening at the same time. When the flow of refined petrol products into the country is controlled by the powerful big men, some of them running for president, it would probably be helpful for them to have people thinking about something else other than politics.
On the Arab Contractors road out to work there are four filling stations, the Mobil, the Eterna, the Conoil and the Oando. In the car ahead of us was dawdling, getting in the way of my cab as we tried to turn. He seemed to be just stopping in the middle of the road for no reason. We passed the car, an old red Peugeot. Driving was an elderly gentleman in a kaftan and a cap, his wife wrapped in bright fabrics. The car was full of baskets, which I assume was full of produce for Wuse Market. He was peering out of his gold rimmed bi-focals at the Eterna petrol station. Closed. His wife looked over the road at the Mobil, closed too. They crawled to a stop and the last I saw of them was looking around, not exactly sure what to do next.

Mallam Kaduna (on the left) and his workers collect all the waste paper from the printing press. They store it in a sea container in front of the office. They sell it to snack hawkers like suya stands and popcorn vendors. A kilo of newspaper goes for N60. They sell it in bundles of 36 kilos.
They had a load of bundles laid out, I counted 168, that's N362,880. Or 1512 pounds. The committee that organises the sale get a percentage for their time.

These are the nurses from the Daughters of Charity clinic, Kubwa. I went to see their World Aids Day performance of a play about stigma and HIV.
I didn't expect to be laughing through the performance, but I did.
The story was about a woman who is abandoned by her gossipy market-women friends who find out she is HIV positive. The gossiping women brought the house down.
"Come close! don't you know that everything I tell you is true!" says one.
"I can't believe you!" says the other, The first undoes and re-wraps her cloth, tucking it around her, fastening her authority. She flung a wrist out and dipped her hip proclaiming her knowledge was closer to gospel than anything the Pope could say. Her nostrils flared at the audacity, the aroma, of the rich gossip. Everyone fell about with laughter.
In the doctor's surgery the HIV positive woman is asked to stick out her tongue. Her huge pink tongue appears, her eyes bulge, and the crowd of nuns, nurses, schoolchildren and passers-by dissolved into fits.
HIV/Aids lessons in my school were on the borderline of terrifying. Twelve years ago there seemed to be no hope at all. I used to worry that if you did get infected after all that safe sex information, free condoms, terrifying films and lectures -how stupid were you for putting yourself at risk? But of course that was only from my perspective, in sexually 'liberal' Europe.
A while ago, I spoke to one guy who was reading a newspaper article about living with HIV. He turned to me and said: "Don't you think this sort of thing promotes Aids?" I was stunned. What was he talking about?
"Are you saying that this kind of article makes people want to be infected with Aids?"
"No," he said, "what I'm saying is that if we continue with the message that there is no stigma attached to Aids then how are we ever going to get rid of it? If we say Aids is OK, where does that leave us?"I suppose he meant that if people put themselves, their spouses and their unborn children at risk by being promiscuous and don't face any moral backlash, how will anyone stop the kind of promiscuous behaviour that spreads sexually transmitted diseases?I had no answer for him, and could only reply that people were human, and make mistakes and we shouldn't condemn them for it.
He looked at me like I was a feeble, weak-minded fool.
At the centre of the nurses' message was the line "sex is not the only way of contracting HIV. Don't jump to conclusions about people's morals." But something inside me felt that this was fire fighting at its most desperate.
My VSO volunteer friend at the Daughters of Charity said: "You should have seen how they laughed at the seminar on how pregnant women can protect their babies from contracting the disease. They were falling about in the aisles. I couldn't see what they were laughing at."
The nurses' performance was inspiring, profound and humorous, and I hope it helps those who are living with Aids or HIV. But I suspect deep and long-lasting cultural change must happen before the spread of the disease is halted.