"I want to assure the international community that we would stand against violence, but we will not cooperate with this government," Falae said in a radio interview following the February 27 vote.

Nigeria's Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) determined that Obasanjo won the two-man contest with 63 percent of the vote.

International election monitors observed numerous voting irregularities and instances of fraud on behalf of both candidates, but monitors determined the level of fraud was insufficient to skew the election results.

During a hurried two-week campaign, Falae had tried to portray Obasanjo, a former Nigerian military ruler and fellow Yoruban, as too closely aligned with the army to guide Nigeria's return to democracy. Nigeria has been ruled by military dictatorships for all but 10 years since independence from Britain in 1960.

Falae, 60, was the joint candidate of his own Alliance for Democracy, a southwestern regional party, and the All Peoples Party. He was seen as a tough-minded intellectual calling for a disciplined government, although many Nigerians associated him with unpopular International Monetary Fund-sponsored structural adjustment programs begun in the 1980s.

Falae was born in the southwestern farming region of Akure, the son of a supervisor in the British colonial government of what was then Western Nigeria.

He graduated in economics from the prestigious University of Ibadan before traveling to the United States to complete his master's degree at Yale University.

Returning home, Falae joined the civil service and rose to the level of permanent secretary -- the highest civil servant in a ministry -- before retiring in 1981 to take up a job managing a merchant bank.

He was selected to head the civil service in 1986 under Gen. Ibrahim Babangida and was later named finance minister.

Falae attempted to run for president in 1992, but his candidacy, along with those of several others, was stopped by Babangida.

In 1997, Falae was imprisoned by the late dictator Gen. Sani Abacha for his alleged part in a bombing campaign. He was freed last June along with Obasanjo, who had also been imprisoned by Abacha.

During the campaign, Falae called for an economic revival, an "immediate end" to Nigeria's fuel shortage, free education for all and "fair distribution of resources and federal jobs."

Falae was popular in his native southwest but was unable to garner much support in the conservative Muslim north and elsewhere.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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