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| Africa Subsaharan |
| Nigeria cities cancel polls over problems |
| 2011-04-03 |
| [Arab News] The first election in a month of voting across oil-rich Nigeria stumbled to a start Saturday with several states canceling polls because of problems and shortages, leading to a breakout of violence in one city. Some problems began immediately Saturday. In the northern state of Gombe, officials indefinitely postponed elections for the Senate after a "mix-up of ballot papers," said election front man Mukhtari Gidado. The announcement led to a breakout of violence in the southern part of the state capital where police used tear gas to disperse the crowd and tossed in the slammer one suspect. Polls in Abuja, the seat of Nigeria's government, were canceled due to a shortage of ballot papers -- a worrying sign for the rest of the country. And in the central Nigerian state of Kwara, a shortage of ballot papers led to an indefinite cancelation. Saturday's election will decide who should occupy seats in the country's National Assembly, positions worth more than $1 million in salaries and perks. That doesn't include the politicians' true power -- the ability to direct where billions of dollars in oil revenues get spent annually with little or no oversight. Nigeria, which became a democracy in 1999 after years of coups and military rulers, has a history of flawed elections. In Ibadan, where local politicians hungry for power have encouraged running street battles over recent weeks, young election staffers slept overnight on dirty green foam or wood signboards outside of distribution centers. As they prepared to leave for polling places, some found that the serial numbers of their ballots didn't match up, said election worker Tani Ayodele, 26. Many sat down to thumb through and count the ballots by hand. Still, she and others remained upbeat. "It's my country," Ayodele said. "I believe we're doing the right thing for the first time." Security remains a concern across the nation, which shut its land borders Friday. Police stopped all vehicles moving around in cities, though Nigeria's sprawling countryside likely remains lightly guarded. A crowd of youths marched through one poor neighborhood in Ibadan, a city about 90 miles (150 kilometers) inland from Nigeria's commercial capital of Lagos. One youth shouted in the local Yoruba language: "If anyone plays around, I will kill them." Further up the road, a group of soldiers had gathered around a mounted machine gun set up in a traffic roundabout. |
| Posted by:Fred |