After 500 die, Nigeria holds another election

[April 26, 2011]  UYO, Nigeria (AP) -- Hundreds of poll workers fled their jobs and tens of thousands of displaced Nigerians had nowhere to cast ballots as gubernatorial elections went ahead Tuesday despite violence after the presidential poll earlier this month that left at least 500 people dead.

The stability of Africa's most populous nation is at stake as it concludes voting that began on April 9 with parliamentary elections.

Hundreds perished in rioting across the country's predominantly Muslim north when tallies from the April 16 presidential poll showed President Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian, had won. Mobs set fire to the hostels where young poll workers were staying, leaving at least 11 recent college graduates dead.

Attahiru Jega, chief of Nigeria's Independent Election Commission, paid tribute to those who died.

"Some have paid the ultimate price for democracy and I am sure that I speak the minds of all Nigerians if I say that the nation will be eternally grateful to them," he said. "One way of immortalizing them is to ensure that we complete the remaining elections successfully and not succumb to the designs of people who want to scuttle our collective aspiration for a strong, united and democratic country."

Some members of Nigeria's National Youth Service Corps vowed to return to duty Tuesday at polling stations as voters choose state leaders who control billions of dollars. But Yushau Shuaib, spokesman for the National Emergency Management Agency, said about 700 corps members already had been evacuated from their posts and would not be present for the voting.

"I just left," said a 25-year-old woman who had been serving in the northern state of Gombe as a poll worker. "Very few corps members are left in the state because we were not safe."

The one-year service program is mandatory for Nigerians who graduate from college before the age of 30, and rules prohibit them from speaking to the media.

Corps members have been leading the team of election staff manning the polling stations. At stations where the corps members did not show up for duty Tuesday, other election staff took over the leadership of the polling station. Nigeria's election days are national holidays and neighborhood polling stations are small with only a few hundred voters registered.

In the country's oil-rich south, corps members came to voting stations but in Akwa Ibom state they sat without any election materials and there was no visible sign of security. At one polling station at a school complex, the crowd shouted at election workers for being late, and party agents pushed and shoved each other.

Gubernatorial opposition candidate John James Akpan Udoedehe said he would only leave his own neighborhood under armed guard, fearing attacks on him and his family. Udoedehe has faced treason and murder charges in recent weeks, charges his lawyer describe as political smears.

Udoedehe recently received bail and cast his own vote Tuesday. He said it was important for people to come out and vote to show that Nigeria had advanced as a democracy.

"Freedom is not a la carte," he said. "You have to work hard at it."

Officials had estimated that 40,000 people fled their homes amid postelection violence and retaliatory attacks. It is not clear how many have returned. Nigerians had to be physically present in the neighborhood where they vote before movement restrictions went into effect early Tuesday.

Officials have postponed the governors' races in the two northern areas hardest hit by violence that erupted after the presidential election -- Kaduna and Bauchi states -- until Thursday.

In Nigeria's northeast, an explosion at a hotel killed three people and wounded 14 others in the city of Maiduguri on Sunday, police said. While no one claimed responsibility for that attack, a radical Muslim sect recently vowed to keep fighting there. Another blast went off early Tuesday in the town but no casualties were reported.

[Associated Press; By JON GAMBRELL]

Associated Press writers Krista Larson and Yinka Ibukun in Lagos, Nigeria; and Njadvara Musa in Maiduguri, Nigeria contributed to this report.

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