Some voters were injured on Saturday when terrorists launched an attack in the Gwoza Local Government Area of Borno State.
The insurgents fired gunshots from the top of the Mandara Mountains, during Saturday’s presidential and National Assembly elections in Gwoza, located in the East of Maiduguri, the Borno capital.
The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Mahmood Yakubu, confirmed the attack during a briefing on Saturday in Abuja.
He, however, no INEC facility was destroyed, adding that the injured persons were taken to a hospital where they are receiving medical attention.
Yakubu said, “The first one is the attack in Gwoza. Gwoza is in Borno State. I want to report that the military has confirmed that it was an 81-mm mortar attack on two facilities including a filling station near INEC office but no damage to INEC facilities and no casualties.
“Some people were injured and they are in the hospital. We wish them a speedy recovery but no destruction of INEC facilities and no disruption of the electoral process.”
The electoral chief also said some Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines, the technology deployed for accreditation and electronic transmission of election results, were snatched by thugs who disrupted the electoral process in parts of the country like in Delta, Katsina, Anambra, amongst other places.
He, however, said INEC has “recovered from all these losses because we have contingency arrangements”.
Accreditation and voting commenced around 08:30am in most of the 176,606 polling units scattered across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory on Saturday as 87.2 million voters with Permanent Voter Cards go to the polls to elect a new president and members of the country’s National Assembly.
Though 18 candidates are in the presidential race, pollsters and analysts have described the contest as a four-horse race between Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP), Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP).