Elections in Nigeria have to be extended by technical problems – Dagbladet.no

Elections in Nigeria have to be extended by one day, after it sat experiencing technical problems with machines that would read the new electronic choosing cards.

The problems led to the voters did not cast a vote in about 300 of the nation’s 150,000 polling stations, and there are these who are open even Sunday.

The new machines will read fingerprints and other personal data in under 10 seconds and is an attempt to get the comprehensive valgfusken in Nigeria to life.

President Goodluck Jonathan and his party PDP criticized the new technology before the elections, while the opposition candidate, the former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari and his APC, believed that it would prevent the regime from manipulating election results.

Evenly

Polls indicate that election outcome can be very smoothly, something that worries observers in the country.

Former elections have ended in violence, something Norwegian diplomats fear will happen this time too.

– The choice is all less two parties and presidential candidates with competing political programs, and more about how the nobles of the political elite, nationally and at the state level, to allocate power and positions, according to a memo from the Norwegian Embassy in Abuja .

Money and weapons

Prospects of wealth is therefore a significant force in Nigerian politics, and will include politicians to hire criminal gangs to ensure electoral victory by use of violence.

– The policy operates within a society where the prevalence of handguns are terrifying large and growing, and where an ever see the weapons being used by criminal gangs, youth gangs and conflicts between villages and people groups. Number killed in such conflicts are almost on the same level as in conflict with Boko Haram, says the Norwegian diplomats.

Divided countries

Nigeria is Africa’s largest and richest countries, but is split. Just over half of the country’s 180 million inhabitants are Muslims and live mainly in the north, while the rest are Christians who mainly live in the south. Jonathan is a Christian, while Buhari is a Muslim.

Buhari has the campaign gone out hard and accused President Goodluck Jonathan to do little to crack down on the militant Islamist group Boko Haram ravaging the north, and at the latest on election day stood behind attacks that cost at least 29 people lost their lives.

13,000 people have been killed since Boko Haram took up arms in 2009, and over 1 million have been displaced.

(NTB)