Nigeria's voters pressed their ink-soaked fingers to ballots Saturday, braving bomb attacks and communal violence to vote in the first round of crucial April elections in the oil-rich nation. Voters from Nigeria's arid north to the mangroves of its southern delta decided who should sit in the country's National Assembly, with fragmented preliminary results suggesting opposition parties made huge strides against the governing People's Democratic Party. Meanwhile, violence erupted in northeast Nigeria, where a radical Islamic sect operates, leaving a hotel ablaze, a politician dead and a polling station and a vote-counting center bombed.
Still, the vote appeared largely peaceful, despite the bombing Friday of a Niger state election office that killed at least eight people and wounded more than two dozen. National election chairman Attahiru Jega told journalists Saturday night that he received several reports of ballot box stealing and violence, but that the polls appeared to have taken place smoothly after being delayed twice in the last week.
"Evidently, politicians are still living in the past," Jega said. The election was to be held April 2, but Jega stopped it after ballot papers and tally sheets went missing in many of the country's polling places. Jega postponed the election, and about 15 percent of the races still weren't held Saturday as misprinted ballots delayed them.