Nigeria’s candidates mix peace pledge with poll threats

ABUJA: Nigeria’s president and his top challenger in Saturday’s election renewed a pledge for peace on Wednesday ahead of a vote marked by accusations that have alarmed some observers, while some of their supporters kept the heated rhetoric flowing.



President Muhammadu Bukhari, who seeks a second term, and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar vowed to contribute to a free and fair election in Africa’s most populous country and refrain from “religious incitement” or ethnic profiling.

STAMPEDE
Late on Tuesday, several people were crushed to death in a stampede during a ruling party rally in Rivers state in the south, widely seen as a potential hotspot of election violence. A video obtained by The Associated Press showed at least seven bodies lying amid abandoned clothes and shoes.
In a statement, Judith Amaechi, who runs the women and youth team in support of Bukhari in the region for his All Progressives Congress party, expressed “deep shock over the death of APC members who were in a stampede.”

Past elections in the country of 190 million people have been marked by deadly violence, though the vote in 2015 was relatively calm. It saw the first defeat of an incumbent and first democratic transfer of power between parties, giving some Nigerians hope that a new era had begun.

“We’ll vote according to parties but in the end the only real party is Nigeria, our country,” Bukhari told a crowd of diplomats, civil society members, observers and others.


Hours later, however, a speaker at the president’s final rally in the capital, Abuja, spoke in inflammatory rhetoric, warning that Nigeria had only two choices: the ruling party or “those who want to kill us.”


Challenger Atiku at the peace pledge event quoted former President Goodluck Jonathan, saying that “my ambition is not worth the blood of any Nigerian.”


Mindful of the already tense atmosphere, the chair of the National Peace Committee urged all of the presidential candidates, more than 70 of them, not to “do anything to make a bad situation worse.”


With just a few days left before the vote, troubles have multiplied.


Gunmen opened fire Wednesday on a convoy carrying the governor of Borno state, killing at least three people, a passenger in the convoy told AP.
Associated Press