Because voting, you see, is governing by manmade law, rather than by the law of Allah. “Gunmen kill 15 in Nigeria during tense election,” by Tim Cocks and Bate Felix, Reuters, March 28, 2015:
ABUJA (Reuters) – Gunmen killed at least 15 people including an opposition politician near polling stations in northeast Nigeria on Saturday, casting an ominous shadow over the closest electoral contest since the end of military rule in 1999.
The tense race pits President Goodluck Jonathan against former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari for the favor of an electorate divided along a complex mix of ethnic, regional and in some cases religious lines.
The poll is seen as the first election in Africa’s most populous nation in which an opposition candidate has a serious chance of unseating the incumbent, and widespread fears it could trigger violence are already becoming reality.
Islamist Boko Haram insurgents launched several attacks on voters in the northeast, killing three in Yobe state and three more in Gombe state, police said.
Shortly afterwards, at least eight people, including the opposition parliamentary candidate for Dukku in Gombe, were killed by unidentified gunmen, a spokesman for Buhari’s All Progressives Congress (APC) said.
Boko Haram militants, who are trying to revive a medieval Islamic caliphate in religiously-mixed Nigeria, reject democracy, and their leader Abubakar Shekau has threatened to kill Nigerians who go to vote.
A string of victories against the militants by Nigeria and neighbors Chad, Cameroon and Niger has reclaimed much of the territory the Islamists controlled earlier this year, but they retain the ability to mount deadly attacks on civilians….