Fire and death after mobs riot over result of Nigeria's election

Rioting erupted across Nigeria's largely Muslim north yesterday and the Red Cross said many people were killed as youths torched churches and homes in anger at President Goodluck Jonathan's election victory.

The vote count showed Mr Jonathan, from the southern oil-producing Niger Delta, had beaten Muhammadu Buhari, a former military ruler from the north, in the first round.

Observers have called the poll the fairest in decades in Africa's most populous nation but Mr Buhari's supporters accuse the ruling party of rigging and his Congress for Progressive Change Party rejected results announced so far.

Those results show how politically polarised the country is, with Mr Buhari sweeping the north and Mr Jonathan winning the largely Christian south.

The Nigerian Red Cross said churches, mosques and homes had been burned in rioting across the north.

Authorities in the northern state of Kaduna imposed a 24-hour curfew after protesters set fire to the residence of vice president Namadi Sambo in the town of Zaria and forced their way into the central prison, releasing inmates. The body of a small boy shot in the chest by a stray bullet was brought to a police station.

"They have destroyed our cars and our houses. I had to run for my life and I am now in my neighbour's house," said Dora Ogbebor, a resident of Zaria.

Plumes of smoke rose into the air in parts of the state capital as protesters set fire to barricades of tyres. Security forces fired in the air and used tear gas to disperse groups of youths shouting "We want Buhari, we want Buhari".

Police said the violence was being orchestrated by those who refused to accept the election results rather than being motivated by religion or ethnicity.

Mr Buhari was yet to make any public statement on the disturbances. The former general's spokesman said he believed the vote count had been manipulated against him.

"We cannot accept these results as announced until cross-checks have been carried out by the electoral commission," Yinka Odumakin said.

Soldiers used whips to disperse people in the streets of Kano, the most populous city in the north. Protesters hurled stones in the back streets. Several churches were burned and authorities imposed a curfew.

Nigeria has a history of rigged and violent elections but Saturday's vote was deemed by many Nigerians, and foreign observers, to have been a vast improvement on the past, with the voting process orderly and little unrest on the day itself.

"Election day showed a generally peaceful and orderly process," said chief European Union election observer Alojz Peterle.A tally of results put Mr Jonathan on nearly 23 million votes to just over 12 million for Mr Buhari.

But Mr Buhari's camp - which had urged its supporters throughout the campaign to make sure their votes counted - said some results looked suspicious, especially where turnout had been exceptionally high in some of Mr Jonathan's strongholds.

Nigeria, a nation of 150 million people, is divided between the Christian-dominated south and the Muslim north. A dozen states across Nigeria's north have Islamic Sharia law in place, though the area remains under the control of secular state governments.

Thousands have been killed in Muslim-Christian violence in the past decade, but the roots of the sectarian conflict are often embedded in struggles for political and economic dominance.