Turmoil hits Nigerian elections

Attacks kill 44; millions turn out to malfunctioning polls

Police officers in Kaduna, Nigeria, keep watch Saturday as people line up to vote in presidential and legislative elections.
Police officers in Kaduna, Nigeria, keep watch Saturday as people line up to vote in presidential and legislative elections.

LAGOS, Nigeria -- Voting in Nigeria's presidential and legislative elections was marred by chaos as officials arrived late to register voters, equipment malfunctioned and attacks that killed dozens of people, including a legislator, were staged in towns in the north and south.

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AP

An election official carries away an empty ballot box Saturday after votes were counted in a polling station in Yola, Nigeria.

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AP

A woman rests Saturday while waiting to vote in Nigeria’s national elections at a polling station in Daura, hometown of former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari, who is challenging President Goodluck Jonathan. The voting, already delayed six weeks, was marred by chaos as officials arrived late to register voters, equipment failed and violence broke out in some areas.

Large crowds gathered outside polling stations for several hours Saturday beyond the 8 a.m. official start of registration waiting for Independent National Electoral Commission staff members to arrive and get voter card readers to work. Accreditation began late at about half of the polling stations, according to provisional data from the Situation Room, a group of civil-society groups monitoring the election.

"No one here has been accredited because INEC officials didn't pitch up," retired petroleum engineer Bassey Itama, 67, said as he waited in the Ajah district of Lagos, the commercial hub. "It's a disgrace; in four years they couldn't arrange an election. All INEC officials should be sued."

The election, which was delayed by six weeks, is the most hotly contested since military rule ended in 1999 in Africa's most populous nation. It pits President Goodluck Jonathan, 57, and his People's Democratic Party against a united opposition led by former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari, a 72-year-old northern Muslim who's lost three previous elections.

Voters also are electing 360 legislators to the House of Assembly, where the opposition currently has a slight edge over Jonathan's party.

Even the president was affected by the malfunctions. Three newly imported card readers failed to recognize the fingerprints of Jonathan and his wife. He returned two hours later and was accredited without the machine using visual identification. Biometric cards and readers are being used for the first time to discourage the kind of fraud that has marred previous votes.

Nearly 60 million people have cards to vote, and millions voted Saturday.

Voting in some areas where accreditation was delayed can take place today, commission spokesman Kayode Idowu said by phone.

"We know the areas where there are challenges and we're intervening," he said. "The rule has always been that anybody in the queue will be accredited whenever that queue ends."

The areas where voting will be extended include Lagos, Nigeria's largest city on the Atlantic coast.

In other areas, vote counting ended Saturday night.

Struggling with blackouts that are routine, some officials counted ballots by the light of vehicles and cellphones.

"We started voting about 2 p.m.," builder Ukpai Oden, 35, said by phone from Abia Ohafi in the southeastern state of Abia. "Accreditation went well. Things are normal here."

The campaign took place against the backdrop of an insurgency by Islamist militant group, Boko Haram, in the north of the country that Human Rights Watch said killed at least 1,000 civilians this year.

Witnesses and officials say Boko Haram extremists killed 41 people, including a legislator, in northeastern Nigeria.

All the attacks took place in the northeast, where the military Friday announced it cleared the Islamic extremists from all major centers.

Before dawn Saturday, Boko Haram extremists invaded the town of Miringa in Borno state, torching people's homes and then shooting them as they tried to escape the smoke. Twenty-five people died in the attack, Borno state Gov. Kashim Shettima said in the city of Maiduguri.

"They had sent messages earlier warning us not to encourage democracy by participating in today's election," said Mallam Garba Buratai, who witnessed the attack.

Nigeria's home-grown Islamic extremists say democracy is a corrupt Western concept.

Another 14 people were killed in extremist attacks on the town of Biri and Dukku, in Gombe state, according to police and local chief Garkuwan Dukku.

Among the dead was a Gombe state legislator, Umaru Ali, said Sani Dugge, the local campaign director for the opposition coalition.

Two voters were killed in Boko Haram attacks on polling stations in the twin Gombe towns of Birin Bolawa and Birin Fulani, according to police.

In four other northeast towns in Yobe state, gunmen drove in and fired into the air, frightening people to flee and disrupting any voting, police said.

In electoral violence elsewhere, three people including a soldier were shot and killed in southern Rivers state in political thuggery, and two car bombs exploded at polling stations in the southeast but no one was injured, according to police.

Information for this article was contributed by Mustapha Muhammad, Emele Onu, Paul Wallace, Mike Cohen, Elisha Bala-Gbogbo, Pauline Bax, Daniel Magnowski, Tony Tamuno, Dulue Mbachu and Yinka Ibukun of Bloomberg News and by Michelle Faul, Jerome Delay, Shehu Saulawa, Hilary Uguru and Ben Curtis of The Associated Press.

A Section on 03/29/2015

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