Nigeria death threat for senator

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/world/africa/6321039.stm

Version 0 of 1.

A Nigerian senator has told the BBC he has received death threats after saying 90% of candidates for April's elections should be disqualified for corruption.

"I am afraid for my life," said Rufai Hanga, who chairs the senate committee in charge of Nigeria's anti-graft body.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is currently screening the names of those intending to run for office, including Mr Hanga.

He has urged parties to drop candidates found not to be "clean and credible".

The polls should see the first transfer of power from one elected leader to another since independence in 1960.

Current President Olusegun Obasanjo is stepping down at the end of a second four-year term.

The EFCC has vowed not to allow any corrupt politician to govern.

Change

"It is my opinion that 90% [of candidates] will not be able to contest, especially the governors," Mr Hanga told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.

Last year the EFCC announced that it was investigating more than half the country's 36 governors for corruption.

Mr Hanga, the opposition Action Congress candidate for governor in Kano State, says he is one of the few clean candidates running.

"Certainly they will hate me for saying that because nobody will want to be exposed," he said.

"Right now I am suffering so many threats even from my own state - threatening to have me killed if I go to Kano.

"They won't shut me up... unless somebody comes out the system will never change, things will never change."

The senator said that by law Nigeria's Independent Electoral Commission (Inec) cannot stop a person from running for office.

But he wants political parties to "act on the information" they receive from the EFCC's screenings and drop those deemed inappropriate.