Nigeria election eve crunch a precursor to bigger woes

Getting 65 million ballots to the far corners of Africa’s most populous country in just one night was only the beginning of the logistical and security nightmare of elections Saturday in Nigeria.

There was the gun battle in the oil-rich south as militants allegedly tried to kidnap the ruling party’s vice presidential candidate; the truck bomb in the capital, Abuja, that rolled toward the election commission headquarters, crashed into a lamppost and failed to detonate; the cancellation of voting in some areas because not all parties were on the ballot; the long delays in opening many of the 120,000 polling stations; the reports of ballot boxes being stuffed and stolen; and the opposition’s allegations that millions of ballots had gone missing.

Presidential candidate Umaru Yar Adua of the ruling People’s Democratic Party is described as a low-key kind of guy. The front-runner summed up the problems Saturday by saying, with some understatement, “There’s nothing a human being can do that is perfect.”

The Supreme Court overturned a ban Monday on one of the main opposition candidates, Vice President Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, leaving the Independent National Electoral Commission with just a few days to reprint ballots to add his name. The commission went back to its South African printers, who met the deadline. Just.

The ballots arrived late Friday, the night before the presidential and parliamentary vote, posing a challenge that would have flummoxed electoral authorities in almost any developed nation, but not the last-minute, don’t-worry, make-do Nigerians, who pressed ahead when others might have balked.

Coping ‘as best we can’

In charge of it all is Maurice Iwu, who as head of the much-criticized electoral commission must have one of the most difficult jobs on Earth.

“I beg Nigerians to be patient. We’re meeting emergencies as best we can,” he said Saturday, before voting was extended by two hours because of the delayed start. The results in the presidential race are expected Monday.

The poll was marred by violence, when police opened fire and killed three boys during an election protest in the northern town of Daura, and by tragedy, when a plane carrying election officials with voting materials crashed, killing 14 people.

With 25 presidential candidates, the balloting marks the nation’s first transfer of power from one civilian administration to another, and carries the hopes of 135 million Nigerians, many yearning for improvements in democracy, more government accountability and better lives. The vote is also seen as key to democratic development on the continent given Nigeria’s size, oil reserves and geopolitical clout.

Since independence from Britain in 1960, Nigeria has been governed mainly by the military until elections in 1999 ushered in eight years of civilian rule.

But to some, those eight years have proved a disappointment.

In 1999, Taiwo Otun and her family lived in a dank, squalid room in Ajengunle, a poor suburb north of Lagos with no running water, intermittent power and a festering open sewer outside her back door.

Eight years on, she’s still there. The unemployed 28-year-old beckoned down a dark corridor with a broken concrete floor and threw aside the curtain to show a small room with few comforts.

“Look at this. We are 10 in this room,” she said, showing where her brothers and sisters sleep sardine-style on the floor. In the corridor was a basic single-burner stove.

“Look at my backyard,” she said, pointing an angry finger at the same open drain and outdoor toilet. In one corner a neighbor with a baby on her back had only one word to say: “Hungry.”

Voting, Otun said, had changed nothing. She said her family ate one meal of cassava a day, and sometimes nothing. “People suffer in this country,” she said. “I’m angry. There’s no food, there’s no money, there’s no work.

“I don’t feel like voting. They will rig the election.”

Nostalgia for military rule

Bunmi Williams, 34, who sells drinks on the street, is nostalgic for the days of military rule.

“We thought democracy would be the best. But it was better then. Everything was cheap,” she said. Today’s leaders “think only of themselves. The money they are supposed to give out to the people, they take it abroad to their own accounts. They steal money, all our oil money.”

The government of President Olusegun Obasanjo brought cellphones, but little else, Williams said. “If I want to communicate with you, now I can do it easily,” she said. “But we don’t have food. We don’t have electricity. We don’t have water.”

On Lagos Island, the scene of violent clashes during state elections last weekend, a group of young men shot pool on a dusty open-air table next to a polling station.

Kola Macauley, 41, a government supporter who works for the Lagos Civil Works and Housing Department, said Obasanjo’s People’s Democratic Party regime had brought peace and stability, paid off the country’s international debt and improved relations with the West.

“I love those who care. I love people who plan ahead for the future. That’s Yar Adua for you,” he said of the ruling party’s candidate. “He loves the people. He’s very careful and transparent.”

But opposition figures, who had pressed for a postponement of the vote and threatened a boycott, condemned the elections even before the first vote was cast.

The Nation, a Lagos newspaper supportive of Abubakar, ran a banner headline Saturday that read, “An Election that Never Was,” and a third leading presidential contender, former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari, described it as the worst election in Nigerian history.

To win the presidency, a candidate needs a simple majority, and a quarter of votes in 24 of the 36 states. If no one succeeds, a second round of voting will be held within a month.

robyn.dixon@latimes.com