Nigeria reopens some polling stations after election glitches

Polling stations have reopened in some parts of Nigeria for a second day of voting after technical glitches disrupted the country’s knife-edge presidential election.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said 300 of the 150,000 polling stations would accept further ballots after handheld devices to read biometric identity cards malfunctioned.

President Goodluck Jonathan, who is facing a strong challenge from Muhammadu Buhari, was the highest-profile victim of the breakdown on Saturday and eventually had to be registered using the old manual method.


His governing People’s Democratic party (PDP) described the situation a “huge national embarrassment” and a vindication of its opposition to the technology, which it said was untested.

“There should have been a test-run for a smaller election before deploying it for an election of this magnitude,” Jonathan’s presidential campaign spokesman Femi Fani-Kayode told Agence France-Presse.

Buhari’s opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) had endorsed the new system as a way of curbing widespread vote-rigging that hit previous elections, and he played down the glitches. “All this, I think, negative thought about Nigeria election shouldn’t hold because of a problem in even a maximum of five states,” he said.

The card readers were provided by ACT Technologies, based in the capital, Abuja. Kayode Idowu, a spokesman for INEC, said the machines had been manufactured abroad but he did not know where or at what cost.

Attahiru Jega, INEC’s chairman, said the problem was limited to about 450 card readers. He told the private Channels Television that provision for a second day of voting had been granted because it was a democratic right for citizens to participate. “It will not affect returns on the presidential election,” he said.

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On Saturday some voters cast their ballot in the dark and at many polling stations the count was started by torchlight or in the glow of mobile phones.

At one station under a bridge in Bonny Camp, Lagos, presiding officers held up each vote one by one and a crowd counted loudly in unison, erupting in cheers when it emerged that Buhari had 122 against Jonathan’s 74. Umar Musa, wearing an Arsenal football shirt, said: “We want change! Electricity. Healthcare. Unemployment. We have waited too long and we need a new direction.”

The election, the most competitive since Nigeria returned to civilian rule 16 years ago, is seen as a critical moment in the development of African democracy. Nearly 60 million people were eligible to vote.

As feared, the Islamist militant group Boko Haram launched several attacks on voters in the north-east on election day. Before dawn, extremists invaded the town of Miringa, in Borno state, torching people’s homes and then shooting them as they tried to escape the smoke. Twenty-five people died in the attack, the Borno state governor Kashim Shettima said.

Another 14 people were killed in attacks on the towns of Biri and Dukku, in Gombe state, according to police and a local chief. Among the dead was a state legislator, Agence France-Presse reported.

Boko Haram, which is fighting to establish an Islamic caliphate in northern Nigeria, rejects democracy, and the group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, has threatened to kill those who go to vote.

The government spokesman Mike Omeri praised the millions of people who had cast their ballots. “The high voter turnout and the dedication and patience of Nigerian voters is, in itself, a triumph of Nigerian democracy,” he said.

Jonathan, a 57-year-old Christian from the south, and Buhari, 72, a former military dictator from the predominantly Muslim north, appealed for calm and signed a “peace accord” on the eve of the vote. Many Nigerians, however, still fear a repeat of the post-election violence that erupted in 2011, when 800 people died in the north after Buhari’s defeat.

“The danger is post-election,” the former Malawian president Bakili Muluzi, who is leading a Commonwealth observer mission, told Reuters. “We’ve been assured by the peace accord between the leaders, but how that trickles down is the danger.”