A truck bomb aimed at electoral commission headquarters ran into barriers and failed to explode yesterday hours before the start of a Nigerian presidential vote already shadowed by violence, charges of fraud and a last-minute ballot hitch.
Voting centers 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 here, in Africa's most populous country. 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.
PHOTO: AFP
"I'm pleased to inform you that we've formally opened the polls," electoral commission Chairman Maurice Iwu said on state television yesterday morning.
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," he said.
Iwu also said voters should expect some delays in many areas because of the logistical hurdles of distributing 65 million ballots to 120,000 polling centers 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.
"I'm begging Nigerians to be patient. We're meeting emergencies as best as we can," Iwu said. "The ballot papers are here, they're distributed and they will be used for elections."
Violence also 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, Police Inspector General Sunday Ehindero said.
The tanker ran into barriers and a power pole and stopped before reaching the building.
Ehindero called for calm. He also said that militants who battled government forces for hours on the eve of the vote in a southern oil-rich state were seeking to kidnap the ruling-party's vice presidential candidate, who is also the state's governor.
Ehindero upped an earlier death toll in recent election violence, saying 34 police officers have died because of "criminal desperation that has attended the conduct of these elections" and that 40 civilians were killed.
He gave no time period for the deaths.
He earlier said 21 died on April 14, when Nigerians voted for state governors and legislators. Local media reported between 40 and 50 dead that day.
The political opposition has rejected results from state elections held on April 14, which showed President Olusegun Obasanjo's ruling party clearly winning. The opposition parties and neutral observers have said the state vote was marred by fraud.
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.
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