Nigeria extends voting

OTUOKE: Nigeria has extended voting to Sunday after problems occurred as millions turned out Saturday to vote in a presidential election that analysts say is too close to call between President Goodluck Jonathan and former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari.
The polling will continue Sunday in some areas where new machines were not reading voters’ biometric cards, said Kayode Idowu, spokesman of the Independent National Electoral Commission. The areas where voting will be extended include Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city on the Atlantic coast.
Meanwhile, there were incidents of violence in some regions. Witnesses said Boko Haram gunmen forced villagers to abandon three northeastern polling stations.
Malam Shuaibu Biri says the insurgents wearing military fatigues drove in five pickup vehicles and motorcycles to villages in Gombe state and shouted at people to leave or risk being killed.
Boko Haram insurgents launched two deadly attacks on voters in northeast Nigeria on Saturday, police and a security source said, killing six people in an election in which insecurity is a major issue. One attack was in Ngalda, Yobe state, state police commissioner Danladi Marcus told Reuters by telephone. The other was in an ethnic Fulani village called Woru in Gombe state, a security source said.
In both attacks gunmen opened fire on voters as they trekked to their polling stations, killing three in each.An election official, who requested anonymity, said: “We could hear the gunmen shouting, ‘Didn’t we warn you about staying away from (the) election?’“
The election official said the masked gunmen arrived in Birin Bolawa in a pickup truck at about 8:30 a.m. (0730 GMT), just after accreditation for the election had begun. One voter was shot dead and others fled in panic.
“They set fire to all the election materials we abandoned as we escaped,” he added.
Karim Jauro, a resident of Birin Fulani said the second attack happened at about 9:15 a.m., adding that had they known about the earlier shooting they would have abandoned the polling station.