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Nigerian President
Goodluck Jonathan (left) and APC main opposition party presidential candidate
Mohammadu Buhari shake hands on March 26, 2015 in Abuja ©Philip Ojisua (AFP)
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Nigerians turned out
en masse to vote in a presidential election Saturday that analysts say is too
close to call. Good-humored voters
smiled when electoral officials arrived late at many polling stations where
registration was to start at 8 a.m. (0700 GMT) followed by voting from 1:30
p.m. (12:30 GMT).
Nearly 60 million
voters are registered for the first election in Nigeria's history where an
opposition candidate has a realistic chance of defeating a sitting president.
President Goodluck
Jonathan and former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari are front-runners among
14 candidates who want to govern Africa's most populous nation beset by a
northeastern Islamic uprising.
AP report continues:
Buhari, resplendent
in white robes, was the first voter to have his fingerprints taken at a polling
station that opened a half hour late in Daura, his hometown in northern Katsina
state.
He was followed an
hour later by Jonathan, in sartorial black with his trademark Fedora hat, in
southern oil-rich state of Bayelsa. Jonathan's registration was delayed for
half an hour, apparently because a succession of newly imported card readers
failed to recognize his fingerprint. Biometric cards and readers are being used
for the first time to prevent the kind of fraud that has marred previous votes.
Afterward, Jonathan
wiped sweat from his brow and urged people to be patient as he had through his
30-minute wait, telling Channels TV: "I appeal to all Nigerians to be
patient no matter the pains it takes as long as if as a nation we can conduct
free and fair elections that the whole world will accept."
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Nigerians wait for to
register before voting in Jere, some 60 kilometers (40 miles) from the capital
Abuja, Nigeria Saturday, March 28, 2015. Nigerians are going to the polls on
Saturday to vote in presidential elections. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)
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This is only the
eighth election since Nigeria's independence from Britain in 1960. In a country
steeped in a history of military coups and bloodshed caused by politics,
ethnicity, land disputes, oil theft and, lately, the Boko Haram Islamic
uprising, the election is important as the nation with Africa's largest economy
consolidates its democracy.
There's a lot of
international interest, especially among nervous foreign investors as Nigeria
is Africa's largest destination for direct foreign investment. Its
oil-dependent economy is hurting from slashed petroleum prices.
Jonathan and Buhari
on Thursday (main picture) signed a peace pledge and promised to accept the results of a free
and fair election. But already dozens have been killed in pre-election violence
amid hate speech highlighting the religious, ethnic and geographic divisions
among Nigerians.
Thousands of
Nigerians and foreigners working here have left the country amid fears of
post-election violence.
The Islamic uprising
that killed an estimated 10,000 people last year has exacerbated relations
between Christians like Jonathan, who dominate the southern, oil-rich area of
Nigeria, and Muslims like Buhari who are the majority in the agricultural and
cattle-herding lands of the north. The population of 170 million is almost
evenly divided between Christians and Muslims.
Some 1,000 people
were killed in rioting after Buhari lost to Jonathan in the 2011 elections.
Then, there was no
doubt that Jonathan had swept the polls by millions of votes.
Now the race is much
closer. The game-changer that transformed Nigeria's political landscape came
two years ago when the main opposition parties formed a coalition and for the
first time united behind one candidate, Buhari.
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