By Nick Tattersall
LAGOS (Reuters) - A suspected bomb blast killed at least six people at a Nigerian election office on Friday and four people were shot dead in a political shooting hours before parliamentary polls.
The violence was a further blow to hopes of orderly elections in Africa's most populous nation, holding its parliamentary election a week later than planned on Saturday because of logistical chaos.
The secret service said six people were killed in the explosion in Suleja, on the northwestern edge of the capital Abuja, but security sources said as many as eight people had died and at least a dozen were injured.
"Six people have been confirmed dead. We don't have much detail," Marilyn Ogar, spokeswoman for the State Security Service (SSS), told Reuters.
Yushua Shuaib, spokesman for the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), said the blast was believed to have been caused by a bomb and there were several casualties.
Officials from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said they were hurrying to the scene. Security forces cordoned off streets in the town, where three people were killed and 21 injured by an explosive device thrown from a car at an election rally last month.
Nigeria is due to hold parliamentary elections on Saturday, presidential elections a week later and governorship polls in its 36 states on April 26.
The run-up to the polls has been marred by isolated bomb attacks on campaign rallies, violence blamed on a radical sect in the remote northeast and sectarian clashes in the centre of a nation roughly split between a Muslim north and Christian south.
Human Rights Watch estimates that more than 85 people have been killed in political violence linked to party primaries and election campaigns since the start of November.
SHOOTING IN NORTHEAST
Violence has broken out on the eve of elections in Nigeria in the past and has often been used to intimidate the local population by making them too fearful to come out and vote.
Gunmen shot dead four people in the northeastern state of Borno, including an official from the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP), as they prepared to distribute election materials on Friday hours ahead of the parliamentary polls, police said.
"The PDP local government secretary of Shani is among the four people shot dead this evening at the police station while the distribution of election materials was going on," a local police officer told Reuters, asking not to be named.
Senior Borno PDP politician Saidu Pindar confirmed the attack to Reuters.
Radical Islamist sect Boko Haram has been blamed for months of targeted killings of police officers and traditional leaders in Borno, but the violence has become increasingly political in the run-up to elections and many analysts believe the sect's name is being used as a front for political thuggery.
In the northern city of Kaduna, a man suspected of building bombs to disrupt the elections was killed late on Thursday when a device exploded prematurely, police said.
There has also been unrest in the restive Niger Delta in the south, President Goodluck Jonathan's home region and the heartland of Africa's biggest oil and gas industry.
Attackers threw dynamite into a guesthouse owned by an opposition candidate in the parliamentary elections in Bayelsa state capital Yenagoa on Tuesday, while the opposition has accused the local government of preparing violence, an allegation it refutes as a smear campaign.
"The administration has been stock-piling arms and ammunition ... The purpose of this orchestrated violence is to subvert the will of the people," the opposition Labour Party said in a statement this week.
The opposition Action Congress of Nigeria has accused the ruling party of mass arrests -- including of its governorship candidate -- in the southeastern state of Akwa Ibom and of intimidation in Rivers State, also in the Niger Delta. [nLDE7352CG]
(For more Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http://af.reuters.com/ )
(Additional reporting by Ibrahim Mshelizza in Hawul, Camillus Eboh in Abuja, Sahabi Yahaya in Kaduna, Samuel Tife in Yenagoa; Editing by Matthew Tostevin)
