Nigerian election postponed over problems

[May 10, 2011]  ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) -- Nigeria's electoral commission chairman says the oil-rich country's National Assembly election has been postponed until Monday over polling problems.

Attahiru Jega made the announcement Saturday as the nation should have been voting. But in many areas, ballot papers and results sheets never made it to polling places.

Several states stopped their polls because of such problems, leading to a breakout of violence in one city.

Jega says: "It is an emergency."

Saturday's election was scheduled to decide who should occupy seats in the country's National Assembly, positions worth more than $1 million in salaries and perks. It also was the true test for Nigeria's electoral commission to prove it could overcome the nation's history of flawed polls.

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THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE.
AP's earlier story is below.

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IBADAN, Nigeria (AP) -- The first election in a month of voting across oil-rich Nigeria stumbled to a start Saturday with several states cancelling polls because of problems and shortages, leading to a breakout of violence in one city.

Some problems began immediately Saturday.

In the northern state of Gombe, officials indefinitely postponed elections for the Senate after a "mix-up of ballot papers," said election spokesman Mukhtari Gidado. The announcement led to a breakout of violence in the southern part of the state capital where police used tear gas to disperse the crowd and arrested one suspect.

Polls in Abuja, the seat of Nigeria's government, were cancelled due to a shortage of ballot papers -- a worrying sign for the rest of the country.

And in the central Nigerian state of Kwara, a shortage of ballot papers led to an indefinite cancellation.

Saturday's election will decide who should occupy seats in the country's National Assembly, positions worth more than $1 million in salaries and perks. That doesn't include the lawmakers' true power -- the ability to direct where billions of dollars in oil revenues get spent annually with little or no oversight.

Nigeria, which became a democracy in 1999 after years of coups and military rulers, has a history of flawed elections. In Ibadan, where local politicians hungry for power have encouraged running street battles over recent weeks, young election staffers slept overnight on dirty green foam or wood signboards outside of distribution centers. As they prepared to leave for polling places, some found that the serial numbers of their ballots didn't match up, said election worker Tani Ayodele, 26. Many sat down to thumb through and count the ballots by hand.

Still, she and others remained upbeat.

"It's my country," Ayodele said. "I believe we're doing the right thing for the first time."

Security remains a concern across the nation, which shut its land borders Friday. Police stopped all vehicles moving around in cities, though Nigeria's sprawling countryside likely remains lightly guarded. A crowd of youths marched through one poor neighborhood in Ibadan, a city about 90 miles (150 kilometers) inland from Nigeria's commercial capital of Lagos.

One youth shouted in the local Yoruba language: "If anyone plays around, I will kill them." Further up the road, a group of soldiers had gathered around a mounted machine gun set up in a traffic roundabout.

[Associated Press]

Associated Press writers Bashir Adigun in Abuja, Nigeria; Saadatu Muhammad Awak in Gombe, Nigeria and Lekan Oyekanmi and Yinka Ibukun in Lagos, Nigeria contributed to this report.

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