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.
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.