Nigerians vote in presidential elections
A truck bomb aimed at electoral commission headquarters ran into barriers and failed to explode today, hours before the start of a Nigerian presidential vote already shadowed by violence, charges of fraud and a last-minute ballot hitch.
Voting centres nonetheless opened on time. In a lagoon-side slum in the sprawling city of Lagos where fishermen live in stilt houses, voters dropped their tally sheets into clear, plastic boxes. Elsewhere, electoral workers were still scrambling to unpack ballots and arrange ballot boxes.
A successful election would be key to advancing democracy in Nigeria – Africa’s most populous country – and across the continent. The voting was to set up a transfer of power between elected civilian leaders for the first time since Nigeria gained independence from Britain in 1960. Other attempts have been overturned by annulments or military coups.
“I’m pleased to inform you that we’ve formally opened the polls,” electoral commission chairman Maurice Iwu said on state television today.
He blamed the failed car bombing on “desperate Nigerians not interested in contesting these elections. I’m glad the election is going on despite this incident”.
Iwu also said voters should expect some delays in many areas due to the logistical hurdles of spreading 65 million ballots to 120,000 polling centres across a vast, impoverished nation of 140 million people, 250 ethnic groups and hundreds of languages.
A main candidate’s name was added only this week after the Supreme Court overturned an electoral commission decision to bar him from running, and some of the millions of ballots were still arriving in the country on Friday.
Presidential ballots distributed in many parts of the country lacked serial numbers or any other unique distinguishing marks that would guard against fraud by allowing officials to track the papers from ballot boxes through collation centres.
“I’m begging Nigerians to be patient. We’re meeting emergencies as best as we can,” Iwu said.
Violence threatened the chances of a smooth election. The would-be attacker at the electoral commission in the capital, Abuja, pointed the tanker truck - loaded with fuel and gas cylinders rigged to explode – toward the building and placed a rock on the accelerator before jumping from the vehicle, said Police Inspector General Sunday Ehindero.
The tanker ran into barriers and a power pole and stopped before reaching the building.
Ehindero upped an earlier death toll in recent election violence, saying 34 police officers have died due to “criminal desperation that has attended the conduct of these elections” and that 40 civilians were killed. He gave no time period.
With a comparatively well educated population and the world’s seventh-largest oil industry, Nigeria enjoys vast human and material potential. But the wealth has been squandered or stolen during the decades of military rule, leaving most Nigerians poor.
President Olusegun Obasanjo, a former military ruler, won a 1999 election that ended 15 years of near-constant military rule. His 2003 re-election was marked by allegations of massive vote rigging. He was prevented from running again by constitutional term limits – after his supporters failed in a bid to overturn the limits.
