Nigerians brave explosions, delays to elect a president

Bloomberg

Nigerians began voting in Africa’s biggest democracy in a tight presidential race between incumbent Muhammadu Buhari and pro-market multimillionaire Atiku Abubakar.
While the polls officially opened at 8 am on Saturday, some balloting stations suffered delays while election monitors reported violence in some areas. The presidential front-runners are Buhari, who’s campaigned on an anti-corruption platform, and Abubakar, who’s promised to boost economic growth but is dogged by graft allegations.
“l am here to vote for a better Nigeria,” 60-year-old Eziekiel Shobola said as he stood in line at a polling station in Lagos, the commercial capital. “I want somebody that will end the suffering in this country.”
The vote, which is also for the Senate and the House of Representatives, followed an 11th-hour postponement a week ago that the electoral commission said was due to logistical problems and not because of security or political issues.
“One outstanding thing about the election is the unparalleled enthusiasm of the voters,” said Esther Uzoma, co-convener of the Nigerian Civil Society Situation Room, a coalition of civic groups monitoring the vote. “The reports we’re getting are that people came out in their numbers, some bringing chairs, some bringing water.”
Just hours before the election started in Africa’s top oil producer, several explosions were heard in Maiduguri, the capital of the northeastern state of Borno where militants have been active for a decade. Borno Commissioner of Police Damian Chukwu denied there was an attack on the city.
With potentially 73 million people voting, the election is the continent’s biggest-ever democratic exercise. Much will depend on turnout, which was less than 44 percent four years ago when Buhari became the first opposition candidate in the West African nation’s history.
“This is a deciding moment for us in the country,” said Chinaka Daniels, who’d been waiting at a polling station in Abuja, the capital, since 5:30 am. “It’s an opportunity to exercise our rights and to vote in the right people.”
Buhari, 76, and Abubakar, 72, are both northern Muslims in a country split roughly evenly between a Christian south and Islamic north. Yet their career paths are very different.
Buhari is a former general who ruled the country briefly in the 1980s and morphed into a civilian politician who won on his fourth try for the presidency in 2015. Abubakar has served as vice president has business interests ranging from oil and gas services to food manufacturing and a private university.
Both carry heavy baggage. Buhari and his ruling All Progressives Congress have faced sharp criticism for their handling of the economy. The president imposed capital controls as the naira currency came under pressure amid plunging revenue form oil, the country’s main export, and foreign investors fled. After an economic contraction in 2016, the economy expanded 1.9 percent last year, the fastest since Buhari’s election.
Yet Nigeria now has more extremely poor people, 87 million, than any other nation, according to the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank. The United Nations expects its population to double to 410 million by 2050, overtaking everywhere bar India and China.