Extremists kill, bully as millions go to the polls

BOKO HARAM extremists killed 41 people, including a legislator, and scared hundreds of people from polling stations but millions voted across Nigeria yesterday in the most closely contested presidential race in the nation’s history.

All the Boko Haram attacks took place in northeastern Nigeria, where the military had announced it had cleared the Islamic extremists from all major centres, including the headquarters of their so-called Islamic caliphate.

Nearly 60 million people have cards to vote, and for the first time there is a possibility that a challenger can defeat a sitting president in the high-stakes contest to govern Africa’s richest and most populous nation.

The frontrunners among 14 candidates are President Goodluck Jonathan and former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari.

Voters are also electing 360 legislators to the House of Assembly, where the Opposition currently has a slight edge over Jonathan’s party.

Nigeria’s political landscape was transformed two years ago when the main opposition parties formed a coalition and for the first time united behind one candidate, Buhari. Dozens of legislators defected from Jonathan’s party.

Polling will continue today in some areas where new machines largely failed to read voters’ biometric cards, said Kayode Idowu, spokesman of the Independent National Electoral Commission.

In other areas, vote-counting ended yesterday, with blackouts that are routine forcing some officials to count by the light of vehicles and cellphones.

Earlier, before dawn, Boko Haram extremists invaded the town of Miringa in Borno state, torching people’s homes and then shooting them as they tried to escape. Twenty-five people died in the attack, Borno state Governor Kashim Shettima said.

‘‘They had sent messages earlier warning us not to encourage democracy by participating in today’s election,’’ said Mallam Garba Buratai, a Miringa resident who witnessed the attack.

Nigeria’s home-grown Islamic extremists say democracy is a corrupt Western concept and point to the endemic corruption as a reason to do away with it in favour of an Islamic caliphate.

Others were killed in extremist attacks on the town of Biri and Dukku, in Gombe state, according to officials.