LAGOS: Angry
voters queuing for hours and entire parts of the country rendered war zones:
pitfalls abound for Nigeria's fast-approaching general election. With just over
a week until the February 16 opening of polls, logistical snafus have
frustrated potential voters. Across the country on Friday, Nigerians made
last-minute attempts to pick up biometric identification cards needed to cast
ballots on what was to be the last day for collection. But many were unable to
collect their Permanent Voters Card (PVC), in a sign of the challenges ahead
for the 84 million people registered to vote in presidential and legislative
polls that will decide the balance of power in Africa's most populous country.

"They are
sabotaging our efforts to vote and elect the candidate of our choice. It's
unfair," said 27-year-old Tobiloba, who had waited in an unseasonal
downpour since 5:30 am to pick up his PVC at a distribution centre in Lagos. By
the end of the day the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had
extended distribution over the weekend until Monday. "We will continue to
take every necessary step to ensure that no registered voter is
disenfranchised," the INEC chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, said. President
Muhammadu Buhari is vying with his main challenger, former vice-president Atiku
Abubakar, for a second four-year term.

Verging on chaos

PVCs played a
major role in the historic 2015 election, where Buhari beat the incumbent
Goodluck Jonathan, in the first victory at the ballot box for a Nigerian
opposition candidate. The cards serve as proof of a voter's identity and are
intended to reduce fraud that has marred previous votes. Yet getting them into
the hands of voters has proven difficult. At the centre in the sprawling Lagos
suburb of Lekki, where Tobiloba and thousands of others waited on Friday, INEC
workers announced names over a dilapidated sound system. "We are bringing
more PVCs, remain here and stay calm," a staffer called out to the increasingly
impatient crowd.

Soldiers were
deployed in the muddy courtyard. Earlier in the day they had to quell an angry
crowd attempting to storm its gates before distribution began, an INEC official
said. Friday was Francis Ojah's fourth attempt to collect his PVC-but again he
was frustrated. "They didn't find it. They told me that I should come
after the elections. Can you imagine?" he said. Meanwhile another woman
left with two cards, saying one was for her, and the other for her husband.

Complaints abound

Nigerians have
complained on social media of being unable to pick up their cards despite
repeated attempts. "We have been inundated by calls, from Nigerians to
review the current process of collection of" PVCs, Yakubu acknowledged
Friday in justifying the extended distribution. But bungled organization isn't
the only challenge the elections may face. There is poor infrastructure and
unreliable electricity.

Potholed roads
make access difficult to many of the nearly 120,000 polling stations across a
country one-and-a-half times the size of France.

Organized crime,
banditry, kidnapping and insurgencies are also major issues. Nowhere has been
as severely affected as the country's northeast, where a decade of violence
caused by the Islamist Boko Haram insurgency has killed some 27,000 people and
displaced around 1.8 million. Observers, including the United States in a
January statement, have expressed fears that Boko Haram could target polling
places. Borno state in the northeast has been ravaged by the violence, and
there INEC said it will open polling stations to serve 400,000 people in eight
of the dozens of camps for Boko Haram displaced.

Speaking on
condition of anonymity, a humanitarian worker based in the state capital
Maiduguri said this would mean "hundreds of thousands of people will not
be able to vote," particularly those living in areas Boko Haram rules near
Lake Chad. Another area of concern is Nigeria's bread basket Middle Belt
region, where clashes between nomadic herdsmen and farming communities have
killed thousands and displaced tens of thousands since early 2018. In the
hard-hit states of Benue and Plateau, many families lost everything when their
houses were burnt in the clashes, including the documents they would need to
collect their PVCs and vote. - AFP