INEC Worried Over Election Violence, Seeks Urgent Steps To Reverse Trend

Nigeria’s election authority on Friday warned of the threat of intensifying campaign violence just over three months before presidential and parliamentary elections.

Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) chairman Mahmood Yakuba said the agency had tracked 50 attacks across the country since campaigning began just over a month ago.

INEC held an emergency meeting on Friday, a day after two of its electoral offices were attacked and set on fire in the southwest.

Security will be a major election issue with Nigeria’s armed forces fighting jihadists in the northeast, armed bandit militias in northwest and central states and separatist agitators in the southeast.

The election approaches as Africa’s largest economy has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, fallout from the war in Ukraine, and its worst flooding in a decade that has impacted food production.