ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) – Voting in Nigeria’s elections continued in some areas on Sunday because of technical problems. More than 40 people were killed in election-related violence Saturday, though millions were able to cast ballots in a presidential election that analysts say is too close to call.
Voting was extended in about 300 of the country’s 150,000 polling stations, including some areas of Lagos, Nigeria’s megacity of 20 million on the Atlantic coast, according to the country’s electoral commission. The extended voting was necessary because new voting equipment failed to confirm voters’ identities. A second day of voting That
Boko Haram extremists killed 41 people, including a legislator, and scared hundreds of people from polling stations in the northeastern Nigeria. In electoral violence elsewhere, three people including a soldier were shot and killed in southern Rivers state and police said two car bombs exploded at polling stations in the southeast but no one was injured.
Nearly 60 million Nigerians 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 front-runners among 14 candidates are President Goodluck Jonathan, a 57-year-old Christian from the south, and former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari, 72, from the predominantly Muslim north.