By 10:30 a.m. in Oye, Nigeria, officials were unable to process a single ballot because voters had been kept away from the polling stations.
ADO EKITI, Nigeria, April 14 — Millions of Nigerians went to the polls on Saturday to choose state and local leaders in the first stage of what is to be a landmark election for Africa’s most populous nation.
The voting was marred by unrest and violence across the country, though in some areas the polls appeared to go smoothly. In the oil-rich Niger Delta, militants attacked police stations, burning three to the ground. In the volatile north, the military broke up demonstrations.
The election, if it is successful, could lead to something new in Nigeria: the first time one elected government hands over power to another, a watershed moment for a nation that has suffered through repeated coups, military rule and a grim civil war that nearly destroyed the country.
“The last time we tried and failed,” said Kayode Fayemi, an opposition candidate for governor in Ekiti State. “What we have now is an elected dictatorship masquerading as a democracy.”
If this election fails, it could plunge Africa’s most populous nation and largest producer of crude oil into chaos, potentially destabilizing oil markets and the entire region.
The balloting was tense in Ekiti State, which has been under a state of emergency since its governor, a member of the ruling People’s Democratic Party, was removed from office amid allegations of corruption and killing of his opponents. On Saturday, parties were accusing one another of rigging the elections.
The voting across Nigeria will choose governors for its 36 states and state and local legislatures. While much of the international attention has focused on the presidential vote, which will take place a week later, for most people state and local government has the deepest influence over their lives.
These offices are highly contested — Nigeria’s federal system of government means that each office controls a piece of the country’s oil bonanza.
Nigeria exports billions of dollars worth of oil each year, and much of that money is sent to state and local governments to spend on basic development and infrastructure — schools, health care, water, electricity. In Ekiti, for example, a tiny state of just two million people, the monthly take of government revenue has averaged about $14 million.
But that money is seldom spent as it should be. Ekiti’s last governor, Ayo Fayose, used the state as his personal purse, building a grandiose office for himself while allowing cronies to pocket millions destined for a poultry farming scheme that failed to produce a single egg, according to federal investigators. As schools, roads and hospitals crumbled, Mr. Fayose bought expensive cars for himself and his entourage.
Violence started early on election day. In Port Harcourt, the capital of the oil industry and a hotbed of militia activity, three police stations were attacked overnight. Residents near one station said they heard gunfire and explosions in the dead of night, and awoke to find the building, several cars and motorbikes destroyed.
Here in Ekiti, in the town of Oye, polling officials were harassed repeatedly by gangs of youths accompanied by armed soldiers. Ogunyemi Tajudee, a 23-year-old geologist, was manning a polling booth, but had been unable to process a single vote by 10:30 Saturday morning.
“Men came on a motorbike with policemen and stamped the ballot papers,” Mr. Tajudee said. “They have been intimidating all the voters.”
A stack of ballots for governor had been marked by the men, 25 in all, each bearing a thumbprint for the candidate of the ruling People’s Democratic Party. The men had intended to stuff these ballots in the box and carry it away, Mr. Tajudee said, but were scared off by the arrival of some foreign journalists.
An hour later, Mr. Tajudee had collected only four ballots of the 236 registered voters assigned to his station. A menacing group of young men tried repeatedly to snatch the ballot box, and had succeeded in taking all the ballot papers for the state assembly race.
“Please don’t leave this area,” Mr. Tajudee pleaded with visiting journalists. “We are in danger.”
At a nearby hospital, Sampson Olawumi winced as a nurse stitched a deep gash in his left shoulder blade. As an observer for the opposition Action Congress, he had gone to a polling station where the ruling party had carted off the ballot box. When he protested, the men attacked him with a machete.
“They just hacked at me,” Mr. Olawumi said.
A P.D.P. poll monitor who tried to intervene was also attacked, and was lying on a nearby bed, covered in blood and in shock.
At another nearby polling station, Bomi Adeya showed up early with her voting card but was told the voting was finished, that she was too late. It was 10 a.m. Election officials standing nearby had the clear plastic boxes slung over their shoulders, full of near stacks of ballots. They refused to be interviewed.
“Nobody voted here,” Mr. Adeya said, before quickly running away from the crowd of young men gathered around the polling station.
Elections have always been messy affairs in Nigeria. In 1999, Olusegun Obasanjo, a former military ruler, was elected president, marking the end of a long and dark period of vicious military dictatorship.
That election was marred by vast fraud and intimidation, according to international observers. The Carter Center, an election monitoring organization, concluded in 1999 that “it is not possible for us to make an accurate judgment about the outcome of the presidential election.”
In 2003, Mr. Obasanjo and his party won unlikely landslide victories, in some case winning more than 99 percent of the vote in precincts where few people had been allowed to cast ballots at all.
The chaotic days leading to this year’s presidential and national legislative elections next week have led to deep concerns that the vote will have little credibility.
The Independent National Electoral Commission has come under criticism for barring from the ballot candidates accused of improprieties by a federal anticorruption agency.
Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Africa subcommittee, said in a statement last week that Mr. Obasanjo had “sparked fresh outrage by using the Independent National Electoral Commission to limit competition, not promote it; by repressing dissent rather than encouraging free speech; by harassing domestic observers and obstructing the free and fair participation of opposition candidates.”
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