NIGERIA:At the "base" on Lagos Island, a street canopy under which neighbourhood drifters gather, the mood ahead of today's presidential and parliamentary elections was somewhere between indifference and disgust. "These elections are not for the people. They are for the politicians," said John Munis, a 26-year-old graduate, reflecting the cynicism of many Nigerians eight years after the military relinquished power.
"They send their children to school in Britain and America, but look at us here. There is no better future for us. We are just roaming the street," he says.
Down the table was Femi, a 30-something vagrant who sleeps in a 2m phone card kiosk in the crowded island centre of Lagos, where Nigeria's flourishing financial sector rubs against incalculable urban distress.
"The president's children, they don't look like us," he says, pointing to the white hairs on his head and bags under his eyes.
"We are suffering and smiling. This election will change nothing. The politicians will still be going abroad and stashing our money there."
Yet some foreign diplomats view the next 72 hours as among the most important in Nigeria's recent history. They see it as an opportunity that, if wasted through fraud, would seriously damage Africa's top oil producer and most populous nation.
The elections should herald the first transfer of power from one civilian president to another. Preparations have been chaotic and tension in many parts of the country high following state-level elections last weekend.
Opposition parties said abuse in these polls was so bad they should be annulled.
They also accused the ruling People's Democratic party of rigging before polling got under way today. A truckload of completed ballot papers were seized by soldiers in the northern city of Kaduna, they said.
In response, Maurice Iwu, head of the electoral commission, caused a fresh furore when he admitted on the eve of the election that the ballot papers had not yet arrived from abroad. They were due to be reprinted this week to allow for the last-minute inclusion of the vice-president Atiku Abubakar, who had been barred from running for the presidency on the grounds of a controversial corruption indictment.
Yesterday, Olusegun Obasanjo, who is due to step down as president on May 29th, appealed to domestic and national observers "not to exaggerate the negative" and defended the integrity of the electoral process.
"Let us continue to improve on the structure and the house rather than pull it down because it is leaking in part," he said.
In Kano, the largest city in the mainly Muslim north, soldiers patrolled one neighbourhood after fighting this week with Islamic militants. At Friday prayers, the mood at the city's mosques was calm.
Many were resigned to what they saw as an inevitable victory for Umaru Yar'Adua, the ruling PDP candidate. "The PDP has money . . . It is in control of this election," said student Ibrahim Isa. - (Financial Times service)