LAGOS, April 2 (Reuters) – Nigerians headed to polling
stations on Saturday for parliamentary elections, the first in a
series of ballots that will test whether Africa’s most populous
nation can break with a history of vote fraud and violence.

Ballot stuffing, intimidation and thuggery were so
widespread in the last nationwide elections in 2007 that foreign
observers questioned whether they reflected the will of the
people, saying they fell far below international standards.

LAGOS, April 2 (Reuters) – Nigeria begins three successive
weekends of nationwide elections with parliamentary polls on
Saturday, a test of whether Africa’s most populous country can
break with a history of vote fraud and violence.

Ballot stuffing, intimidation of voters and thuggery were so
widespread in the last elections in 2007 that foreign observers
questioned whether they reflected the will of the people, saying
they fell far below international standards.

LAGOS, April 1 (Reuters) – Nigerian voters may not be that
enthusiastic about Saturday’s parliamentary elections but the
candidates certainly are — winners will get a pay package whose
allowances alone top $1 million a year.

Ask many people in Africa’s most populous country who their
local candidates are in the House of Representatives and Senate
elections and the response is a blank stare. What has parliament
ever done for them, is a common response.

LAGOS, April 1 (Reuters) – Elections in April could hand
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan a stronger mandate for
reform but, even if he wins, the make-up of the new government
and parliament will be key to his ability to effect change.

Jonathan is the front-runner in the April 9 presidential
vote but the ruling party will face a tougher battle maintaining
its strong majority in parliamentary elections on April 2 and
its regional dominance in state governorship polls on April 16.
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Graphic on elections: link.reuters.com/xet78r
For more stories, background and analysis: [nLDE68H051]
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LAGOS, March 31 (Reuters) – Nigeria embarks on general
elections on Saturday which could reshape its political
landscape, weakening the decade-long dominance of its ruling
party and breaking a history of rigged and violent polls.

Africa’s most populous nation votes over three successive
Saturdays for a new parliament, president and state governors
respectively, all of them set to be fiercely contested races.

LAGOS (Reuters) – From lobbying for intervention in crisis-torn Ivory Coast to strong backing for Western-led air strikes in Libya, Nigeria has been busy burnishing its credentials on the diplomatic stage in recent months.

The African giant, home to more people than Russia, won an unprecedented third term as chairman of West African regional bloc ECOWAS last week and sees itself as a prime contender for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.

LAGOS, March 28 (Reuters) – Walk into some government
buildings in Nigeria and it isn’t hard to understand why the
pace of economic reform is slow.

Bored-looking bureaucrats sit on chairs that look many
decades old. Calendars on the walls are years out of date and
some officials can’t remember the last time their phones worked.
Nobody blinks when the power fails.

LAGOS, March 22 (Reuters) – Nigerian President Goodluck
Jonathan is on course to win April elections but the ruling
People’s Democratic Party (PDP) could lose control of several
states, according to local opinion polls.

The surveys, published in Nigerian newspapers this week,
vary widely in detail and scientific quality — one claimed to
have had 70 million SMS responses, roughly equivalent to every
adult in the country — but they broadly show a common trend.

KANO, Nigeria (Reuters) – Standing on the dancefloor among shards of glass and splintered wood, Tony Baisie rues the day he agreed to help set up a nightclub in one of West Africa’s oldest Islamic cities.

For more than 15 years this converted office on an industrial back street in Kano, northern Nigeria, was a thriving business. Customers — Christian and Muslim — would dance among its mirrored walls or shoot pool in the courtyard outside.