An attempt to blow up the electoral headquarters with a petrol tanker, attacks by thugs, missing ballot papers and low turnout undermined Nigeria’s presidential election on Saturday.
The vote should seal the first handover from one civilian president to another in Africa’s most populous nation, scarred by three decades of corrupt military rule, and has been seen as a possible democratic beacon for the continent.
But opposition parties said there were many problems with ballots, voting began late or not at all in some places and political thugs stole ballot boxes.
Hundreds of youths wielding sticks smashed cars and set fire to roadside shacks in Daura, the northern home town of leading opposition candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, after his supporters reported thousands of ballots missing.
The crowd dispersed after Buhari called for a peaceful vote.
Opposition parties accused the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) of removing ballots from secure compounds operated by the Independent National Electoral Commission (Inec) and marking them up illegally.
”What has happened right now across the country has shown the PDP, the government, Inec and some law enforcement agencies are not prepared to have a free and fair election,” Buhari said.
Local media reported little or no voting in the south-eastern states of Enugu and Anambra, where people said they were disenfranchised.
Thugs in Kano armed with swords and guns stole ballot boxes, while an election official in south-western Ondo state was abducted by a gang dressed in police and army uniforms.
Ambush
Meanwhile, seven police officers on election duty were ambushed and shot dead late on Friday near Karu town in Nigeria’s central Nassarawa State, national police spokesperson Haz Iwendi told Agence France-Presse Saturday.
”The seven police officers were coming from Lafia [the state capital]. They ran into an ambush near Karu town and they were shot dead by unknown assailants,” Iwendi said in a telephone interview.
The attack on the eve of Saturday’s key presidential and parliamentary elections brought to 26 the number of police officers killed in the past week in election-related and other violence.
Also on Saturday, European Union observers monitoring the elections criticised the organisation of the poll in the north.
”For now the assessment is outspokenly negative … I’m very concerned,” Max van den Berg, head of the EU observer mission, told journalists in the northern town of Kaduna.
He said he was commenting on the process so far, as voting was still going on, at least in most parts of the country.
Van den Berg said the mission had not seen the massive improvement it had asked for following harshly criticised governorship elections. EU observers had expressed ”serious concerns” due to organisational problems, under-age voting and a failure to guarantee secrecy of the ballot.
In Kaduna state Saturday, where the EU mission was monitoring, voting had still not started by early afternoon.
”No polling station has yet opened. No voting papers have been distributed from the [electoral commission] centre to the voting stations”, Van den Berg said shortly before 2pm local time.
Tanker bomb
Hours before polling stations opened, unknown attackers tried to blow up the national electoral headquarters in the capital, Abuja, with a fully laden petrol tanker. It hit a telephone pole outside the building and did not explode. Electoral commissioner Maurice Iwu blamed ”desperate Nigerians” out to sabotage democracy, but said polls must go on.
Late on Friday, militants in the oil-producing Niger Delta had stormed the office of the ruling party’s vice-presidential candidate in what police said was an assassination attempt. He escaped but two civilians were killed.
Troops and police were deployed in large numbers on the streets of the major cities, and turnout was low in many places after widespread violence since elections for state governors last weekend that were widely denounced as rigged.
Iwu said voting started late in some places because of last-minute changes to voting papers and transport delays.
More than 60-million ballots had to be reprinted at the last minute after the Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the electoral commission was wrong to disqualify Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, arch-rival of President Olusegun Obasanjo.
World oil prices rose on Friday because of concern that turmoil could further cut supplies from the world’s eighth-largest exporter, where output has been reduced by a fifth for the last year because of militant attacks in the oil delta.
But officials from Obasanjo on down said the vote would still be historic.
The PDP has fielded a little-known state governor, Umaru Yar’Adua, as its candidate but the opposition says he is a puppet intended to perpetuate Obasanjo’s power. — Reuters, AFP