Nigeria Voting Slowly Starts After Bombing
April 9, 2011Nigeria slowly began the first of three crucial votes in the oil-rich nation Saturday, as voters came out to cast ballots despite a bomb attack and threats of violence.
Poll workers shoved themselves into rickety commercial buses, cars and other vehicles to travel to the roughly 120,000 polling stations spread throughout Africa’s most populous nation.
Meanwhile, witnesses said gunmen shot and killed a local politician in northeast Nigeria and set a hotel afire in a city under siege by a radical Islamic sect.
An estimated 73.5 million registered to vote ahead of this twice-delayed election to pick members of the country’s National Assembly. The positions remain highly lucrative, with more than $1 million in salaries and benefits, plus the ability to direct a swollen budget in a nation where billions in oil revenues routinely go missing.
The election was to be held last Saturday, but national election chairman Attahiru Jega stopped it after ballot papers and tally sheets went missing in many of the country’s polling place. Jega twice postponed the election and about 15 percent of the races still won’t be held Saturday as misprinted ballots delayed them.
Nigeria, home to 150 million people, closed its land borders Friday. Officials promised to increase security in a nation with a history of flawed elections since it became a democracy in 1999. However, a bomb attack Friday on an election office in Niger state near the country’s capital killed at least eight people and wounded more than two dozen others.
A statement released Saturday by the federal police promised to provide election offices 24-hour surveillance to stop future attacks. However, officials have yet to name any suspects in the attack.
Meanwhile, a radical Islamic sect killed four people in northeast Nigeria on Friday and an alleged bomber died after the explosive he was carrying detonated in Kaduna state.
Gunmen shot and killed a politician with the All Nigeria People’s Party early Saturday in Maiduguri, a city at the center of violence blamed on a radical Muslim sect known locally as Boko Haram. Gunmen later set fire to the Maiduguri International Hotel ahead of the voting, witnesses told The Associated Press. Police did not immediately comment.
In Ibadan, a city about 90 miles inland from Nigeria’s commercial capital of Lagos, one commercial bus traveled over the dirt roads with ballot boxes hanging out of its open windows. It dropped off workers of the Independent National Electoral Commission, with some rushing back to the idling van after realizing they got out at the wrong stop.
In the Molete neighborhood, two polling stations set up next to each other on a dirt road with open sewers. Voters orderly lined up to have their identifications checked, as poll workers nervously murmured to each other about the fact they had no ballots for the vote.
There were no police officers there, despite promises to provide security at the vote.
“We’re expecting it to be different,” said T.L. Adeyemo, 76, a local government chairman. “What happened last week was an embarrassment to all of us.”
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