Nigeria's third biggest party splits

ABUJA, Nigeria (Reuters) -- Nigeria's third biggest party has split into factions after its first national convention ended with the election of two chairmen, party officials said on Thursday.

At the main convention of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) held at an open ground in the capital Abuja on Wednesday, a faction led by Justice Minister Bola Ige elected former lawmaker Ahmed Abdulkadir as chairman.

Simultaneously, another faction led by Olu Falae, the party's candidate in February 1999 presidential elections, gathered in a hotel in Abuja to elect the party's pre-convention chairman, Yussuf Mamman, a former diplomat.

The Abdulkadir faction appeared to have the recognition of Nigeria's Independent National Electoral Commission, whose officials supervised the election but were not at the convention of the Mamman group.

There was no immediate comment from the commission on the rival conventions or their outcome.

Many Nigerians regard the crisis in AD as a dangerous development in Nigeria's attempt to install durable democratic institutions after decades of military rule.

Some analysts recall that intra-party squabbles in the region controlled by the AD were used by soldiers as part of their justification for staging Nigeria's first coup in 1966.

The split in the AD was the climax to a prolonged crisis that had rocked the party, which has its power base in southwest Nigeria, home region of President Olusegun Obasanjo.

One faction has blamed the crisis on Obasanjo and his ruling People's Democratic Party, saying it is bent on splitting the AD and winning over some of its members.

Ige and the junior minister of defense, Dupe Adelaja, are both from the AD.

The AD produced the governors of six states in the southwest region dominated by the Yoruba people and is widely regarded as the most disciplined of Nigeria's three dominant parties. It claims to be the only party with a clear ideology.

The party has 86 MPs out of a total of 468 members in the two chambers of Nigeria's National Assembly. It also controls regional assemblies in the six states where it won governorship elections. All six states are in Nigeria's industrial heartland in the southwest region around Lagos.

Both rival chairmen are from the largely Muslim north of the country under ethnic and regional balancing arrangements adopted by Nigeria's main parties.

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