‘Everybody suffers too much:’ Voters go to polls

As Nigerians prepared to vote for president Saturday, Sister Meg Odeh looked up from a selection of pineapples laid out at a roadside market and considered the fate of her country. She ticked off the sprawling problems facing Africa’s most populous nation: insecurity, poverty, corruption.

“I’m just praying for something good to happen to our people,” the Roman Catholic nun said with a sigh.

More than 84 million voters in this country of some 190 million will head to the polls in what is seen as a close and heated race between 76-year-old President Muhammadu Buhari and top challenger Atiku Abubakar, a billionaire former vice president. Both have pledged to work for a peaceful election even as their supporters, including high-level officials, have caused alarm with vivid warnings against foreign interference and allegations of rigging.

“We love our country and we need our country to be safe from all the violence … and all the nonsense that takes place during election time,” worshipper Amin Muhammad Khalif said as he emerged Friday from prayers in Kano, Nigeria’s secondlargest city in a nation largely evenly split between Muslims and Christians.

When Buhari came to power in 2015 he made history with the first defeat of an incumbent president in an election hailed as one of the most transparent and untroubled ever in Nigeria, which has seen deadly post-vote violence in the past. ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH