Nigeria targets 60million voters

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Nigeria has embarked on a voter registration exercise ahead of landmark elections due in April with some 60 million eligible voters.

But there are concerns about the reliability of the electronic machines imported for the job.

Some of them did not work as the exercise began because of flat batteries and technical faults.

Nigeria's Independent National Electoral Commission (Inec) said "they were only minor hitches."

End to vote rigging?

It is the first time machines are being used to register voters in Africa's most populous country and is Inec's response to vote rigging which characterised previous polls.

About the size of a suitcase, it is supposed to take a digital picture of the voter and record their thumb print.

A card is produced and the information stored electronically. As a backup, a manual register is also to be kept.

"In the past we had multiple registrations, impersonation, stuffing of ballot boxes and buying of voters' cards," said Inec spokesman Segun Adeogun.

"This time around it's not possible."

Nigerians are due to elect their president, state governors and MPs next April in a vote that should mark the first democratic handover to a new government since the country gained independence from Britain in 1960.

Difficulties

Nigeria is a vast country which lacks basic infrastructure with most of its 130 million people living in rural areas with no paved roads and electricity, factors that may combine to make Inec's job more difficult.

The BBC's Mannir Dan-Ali in Nigeria's capital, Abuja, says most eligible voters do not know where they are supposed to be registered.

In the north-eastern town of Yola, it took Vice President Atiku Abubakar more than 40 minutes to have his photograph taken and his thumbprint recorded.

Mr Abubakar told reporters it was too early to pass judgement on the exercise which is set to close at the end of November.