Voting took place in Nigeria yesterday in the parliamentary and presidential elections.

Observers have reported ballot stuffing, multiple voting, delayed polling and vote buying around the country, which has cast a shadow over the elections. On Friday there was even an attempt to blow up the Federal Election Commission’s headquarters in the capital, Abuja, by ramming a petrol taker with gas cylinders into the building – the vehicle missed its target.

If power passes smoothly to the winner of the presidential election – the handover is scheduled for 29 May – it will be the first transition of power from one civilian administration to another in Nigeria since independence in 1960.

The main contenders in the presidential race are the present Vice President, Atiku Abubakar for the Action Congress, Muhammadu Buhari for the All Nigeria People’s Party and the favourite, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, for the governing People’s Democratic Party.

The candidates are marked more by their tribal and religious identities, than by their places on the political spectrum, such is electoral politics in West Africa, where politics is dominated by personalities and people vote along tribal and religious lines.

In the UK, policy (and, to a lesser extent, ideology) is a major determinant of how people vote; in West Africa it is not. What does this tell us about democracy? Do the routine disturbances and hap-hazard way democracy is conducted in West Africa demonstrate that democracy is essentially a Western concept, ill suited to West Africa? Why should we presume Western style democracy is superior to traditional forms of governance in West Africa and elsewhere?