Gunmen attack Nigeria election office weeks before vote

GUNMEN wielding explosives bombed a local election office and a police station in south-east Nigeria, killing a teenage boy and destroying voting materials, officials said, weeks before the country’s presidential ballot.

The attack this week on the Idemili office of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Anambra state was the latest on electoral authorities in the lead up to the February 25 election.

Insecurity is a major issue in the campaign for the vote to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari, a former army commander who is stepping down after two terms allowed in the constitution.

“The building was substantially damaged. All furniture and other items were destroyed, including non-sensitive materials recently delivered in readiness for the 2023 General Election,” INEC’s national spokesperson Festus Okoye said. He said among the items lost were 729 ballot boxes, 243 voting cubicles and 256 election bags.

Okoye said voters cards yet to be collected by their owners for the ballot were not affected by the fire.

“The destruction appears to have been co-ordinated as the mobile police station in the LGA (local government area) was similarly attacked,” he added.

Since it emerged from military rule in 1999, elections in Africa’s most populous nation have often been marred by violence, claims of vote-rigging and logistical problems. INEC has expressed concerns over repeated attacks on its facilities, fearing they may jeopardise the election, though INEC’s chairperson Mahmood Yakubu has said the upcoming ballot will go ahead as planned and without delays.

But Yakubu said this week there were some concerns about recent gasoline shortages affecting logistics on election day. INEC met with the NNPC state oil company to discuss how to manage any scarcity.

Anambra police spokesperson Ikenga Tochukwu said Wednesday’s gunmen, armed also with improvised explosives and petrol bombs, invaded the INEC office, the police station and the residential building in the station.

He said a boy was killed and a girl injured in the assault.

Violence in south-east Nigeria is often blamed on the separatist militant group Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and its armed wing, the Eastern Security Network. IPOB, which agitates for a separate state for ethnic Igbo people in the south-east, has repeatedly denied any responsibility for the violence. Scores of police and other security personnel have been killed in south-eastern states since the beginning of last year in targeted attacks, according to local media tallies.

Separatism is sensitive in Nigeria, where a 1967 call for an independent Republic of Biafra in the south-east by Igbo army officers sparked a threeyear civil war that left more than one million people dead. Nigeria’s armed forces are also battling on several other fronts, largely with jihadists.