April 23, 2007	Monday	Rabi-us-Sani 05, 1428

LAGOS: Nigeria’s chaotic presidential and parliamentary elections began on Saturday with a failed attempt to blow up the country’s election headquarters by using a petrol tanker as a bomb — and then descended into confusion with shortages of ballot papers in some opposition strongholds. Voters also discovered that polling stations had been moved without notice.

The problems further undermined the credibility of an election that many of Nigeria’s 60 million registered voters view with suspicion amid evidence of ballot-rigging, political violence and intimidation.

Opposition parties have accused the government of mobilising the resources of the state in favour of the ruling party candidate, Umaru Yar’Adua. He is expected to win, but his main opponents, the former military ruler, Muhammadu Buhari, and Nigeria’s present Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar, say that if he does they will launch a legal challenge to prevent him being inaugurated next month.

Opinion polls show that corruption and individual candidates’ probity remain a preoccupation of voters along with such problems as intermittent supplies of electricity and unemployment.

The attempt to blow up the national electoral commission headquarters in the capital, Abuja, failed when the attackers rolled the petrol tanker towards the building, but it hit a telephone pole and the detonators failed to explode. It is not known who was responsible.

On Friday evening, armed men in the volatile Niger Delta stormed the offices of the ruling People’s Democratic Party candidate for Vice-President, Goodluck Jonathan, in what police said was an assassination attempt. He escaped but two election workers were killed.

The commission chairman, Maurice Iwu, described the attacks as acts by ‘desperate Nigerians who are only interested in dragging our country back to a situation of chaos’.

Regional elections a week ago were marred by the open stuffing of ballot boxes in some areas and political violence in which about 50 people were killed on election day.

The election is the first since independence in 1960 in which one elected leader will pass power to another. But the hopes of millions of Nigerians that, besides consigning perpetual military coups to history, the landmark vote might also herald a definitive break with the corruption and ethnic politics that has sacrificed their country’s vast wealth and potential have been dealt a blow by the conduct of the election.

On Saturday, in opposition areas of Lagos, some polling stations had no voters at all by lunchtime because, electoral commission officials said, they had been told to move the booths from the area where people were registered to other parts of the city.

In opposition strongholds in northern Nigeria, including Katsina and Kano, a shortage of ballot papers left many people unable to vote.

The electoral commission attributed the problems to administrative difficulties. The outgoing President, Olusegun Obasanjo, has urged both foreign and Nigerian election monitors not to undermine confidence in the poll by “exaggerating’ the difficulties.

But many Nigerians see a conspiracy at work and say it is Obasanjo who has damaged the election’s credibility through an organised strategy to undercut the opposition by mobilising the police, state-owned media and other government resources on behalf of the ruling party.

Neither was the voting in secret at many polling stations. People were obliged to mark their ballot with a thumb print in front of a police officer. An opposition supporter, Ibrahim Elbokaway, said that he was not really bothered by the lack of ballot secrecy.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service