Millions of Nigerians vote in elections marred by violence

Millions of Nigerians went to the polls on Saturday for the first genuine electoral contest since the end of military rule in 1999. The race between President Goodluck Jonathan and former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari — which analysts say is too close to call — has so far been marred by problems with voting machines and deadly violence that has left at least 14 people dead. 

Boko Haram fighters launched several attacks on voters in the northeast, killing three people in Yobe state and three more in Gombe state, police said.

At least eight people, including an assembly candidate for Dukku in in northeastern Nigeria's Gombe state, were also killed by unidentified gunmen, a spokesman for Buhari's All Progressives Congress (APC) said.

Two car bombs also exploded at two polling stations in south-central Enugu state but did not hurt voters, police said. Police detonated two other car bombs at a primary school in Enugu, said Enugu state police Commissioner Dan Bature.

Nigeria's northeast is the center of the uprising of armed group Boko Haram which has vowed to disrupt elections, calling democracy a corrupt Western concept.

Thousands of people forced from the homes by the insurgency lined up to vote at a refugee camp in Yola, the northeast Adamawa state capital, which is hosting as many refugees as its 300,000 residents.

Polling stations opened late in many areas as officials rushed across the country delivering ballot materials by trucks, speedboats, motorcycles, mules and camels, in the case of a northern mountaintop village, according to spokesman Kayode Idowu of the Independent National Electoral Commission.

There was also anger as people waited hours to be registered to vote, only to find that machines were not reading new biometric voting cards.

Even the Jonathan was affected. Three newly imported card readers failed to recognize the fingerprints of the president and his wife. He returned two hours later and was accredited without the machine using visual identification. Biometric cards and readers are being used for the first time to discourage the kind of fraud that has marred previous votes.

Afterward, Jonathan wiped sweat from his brow and urged people to be patient as he had, telling Channels TV: "I appeal to all Nigerians to be patient no matter the pains it takes as long as if, as a nation, we can conduct free and fair elections that the whole world will accept."

In the capital, Abuja, the vote was proceeding fairly smoothly, Al Jazeera's Yvonne Ndege reported. Election officials in the country said that in areas where there have been problems, polls could be extended into Sunday. The results are not expected to be known until at least 48 hours after polls close. 

Social media was abuzz with the problem. One tweeter said they solved their issue by having an official remove the protective plastic film from the screen supposed to read a fingerprint on the card reader.

The official website of the Independent National Electoral Commission was also hacked but was quickly secured, said officials who said the site holds no sensitive material.

Trader Angela Okele expressed concern after getting accredited in Port Harcourt, Nigeria's southern oil capital. "The process is too slow. If it continues like this many people will not be able to cast their votes today," she said.

Electoral officials stressed that once voting starts it will not end until the last person in line has voted, even if it takes all night.

Nearly 60 million people have cards to vote with registration that was scheduled to start at 8 a.m. followed by voting from 1:30 p.m.

Jonathan and Buhari are front-runners among 14 candidates who want to govern Africa's most populous nation. 

This is only the eighth election since Nigeria's independence from Britain in 1960. In a country steeped in a history of military coups and bloodshed caused by politics, ethnicity, land disputes, oil theft and, lately, the Boko Haram uprising, the election is important as Africa's richest nation consolidates its democracy.

The vote is seen as a referendum on the record of Jonathan, a former zoology professor whose time in office has been blighted by massive corruption scandals and the Boko Haram insurgency in which thousands have died.

"These elections are a defining moment for Nigeria. There is stiff competition. People have a real choice about who they want as leader," former Malawian President Bakili Muluzi, who is leading a Commonwealth observer mission, told Reuters.

"The danger is post-election. We've been assured by the peace accord between the leaders but how that trickles down is the danger," he said, referring to a second pact signed between Jonathan and Buhari on Friday not to whip up violence.

Yet the poisonous rhetoric emanating from both sides during the campaign, as well as some scuffles and shootings, have raised doubts over whether such agreements will be respected.

When Buhari, a northern Muslim, lost to Jonathan, a southern Christian, in 2011, it triggered rioting in the mostly Muslim north that killed 800 people and destroying the homes of 65,000.

Al Jazeera and wire services