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Angry voters queuing for hours and entire regions of the country have returned the war zones: the pitfalls are many for the next general election in Nigeria.
With a little more than a week until the opening of the polls on February 16, logistical snafus frustrated potential voters.
On Friday, across the country, Nigerians tried to retrieve the biometric ID cards needed to vote on the last day of the collection.
But many have been unable to collect their permanent voting card (PVC), sign of future challenges for the 84 million people listed in the presidential and legislative polls that will decide the balance of power in the most populous country d & # 39; Africa.
"They are sabotaging our efforts to vote and elect the candidate of our choice, which is unfair," said 27-year-old Tobiloba, who had been waiting for five and a half hours for the ship to drop into a distribution center in Lagos. . .
At the end of the day, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had extended its distribution this weekend until Monday.
"We will continue to take all necessary measures to ensure that no registered voter is deprived of the right to vote," said INEC President Mahmood Yakubu.
President Muhammadu Buhari is fighting with his main rival, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, for a second four-year term.
The PVCs played a major role in the historic election of 2015, during which Buhari beat incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan in the first election victory at the polls of a Nigerian opposition candidate.
The cards serve as evidence of an elector's identity and are intended to reduce the fraud that has tainted the previous votes.
Yet putting them in the hands of voters proved difficult.
In the center of the sprawling suburb of Lekki, Lagos, where Tobiloba and thousands of other people were waiting Friday, INEC workers announced names on a rundown sound system.
"We bring more PVC, stay here and stay calm," one staff member told an increasingly impatient crowd.
The soldiers were deployed in the muddy yard. Earlier in the day, they had to quell an angry mob that was trying to storm its doors before the start of the distribution, an INEC official told AFP.
Friday was Francis Ojah's fourth attempt to recover his PVC – but again, he was frustrated.
"They did not find it, they said I should come after the election, can you imagine?" he said.
Meanwhile, another woman left with two cards saying that one was for her and the other for her husband.
Nigerians have complained on social media about their inability to recover their cards despite repeated attempts.
"We have been overwhelmed by calls from Nigerians to review the current process of collecting" PVC ", acknowledged Yakubu on Friday justifying the extension of the distribution.
But the failed organization is not the only challenge that elections can face. There is poor infrastructure and unreliable electricity.
The cracked roads make it difficult to access most of the 120,000 polling stations in a country twice as big as France.
Organized crime, banditry, kidnappings and insurgencies are also major problems.
Nowhere else in the north-east is a decade of violence provoked by the Islamist insurgency Boko Haram that has killed an estimated 27,000 people and displaced about 1.8 million people.
Observers, including the United States in a January statement, have expressed concern that Boko Haram can not target polling stations.
The Borno region in the north-east of the country has been ravaged by violence. INEC announced the opening of polling stations serving 400,000 people in eight of dozens of IDP camps in Boko Haram.
Under the guise of anonymity, a humanitarian worker based in Maiduguri, the state capital, said it would mean that "hundreds of thousands of people will not be able to vote," especially those living in the regions of Boko Haram reigning near Lake Chad.
The Middle Belt region in Nigeria, where clashes between nomadic pastoralists and farming communities have killed thousands and displaced tens of thousands since the beginning of 2018, is another area of concern.
In the Benue and Plateau states, which were badly hit, many families lost everything when their homes were set on fire during the clashes, including the documents they would need to recover their PVC and vote.
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