The final stage of Nigeria’s election began yesterday with voting for powerful State governors, two weeks after a presidential poll saw an incumbent leader unseated at the ballot box for the first time.

The 36 governors are among the most influential politicians in Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer and top economy, with budgets larger than those of small nations and influence that can decide who goes on presidential tickets.

With so much at stake, candidates in past governorship elections have often played dirty, snatching ballot boxes, manipulating turnout and engaging in thuggery and intimidation.

The 36 governors are among the most influential politicians in Nigeria

Voting began in most states of the most populous African state by midmorning but sporadic violence in coastal Rivers state, Nigeria’s oil hub, disrupted balloting in many districts.

Two people were killed in election-related incidents. A policeman in Port Harcourt was hacked to death on Friday night, Rivers police spokesman Ahmed Mohammad said. In Kebbi state in the northwest, gunmen killed an opposition party agent and wounded three others, police and hospital sources said.

Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) beat President Goodluck Jonathan of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) last month with 15.4 million votes to 13.3 million.

The vote, which Buhari won on pledges to clean up Nigeria’s notoriously corrupt politics and crack down harder on the Islamist Boko Haram insurgency engulfing the northeast, was deemed free and less violent than past polls.

Yet for many Nigerians, who their governor is matters more than who sits in the capital Abuja. In the early going of yesterday’s vote, however, turnout appeared lower than for the presidential poll due to apathy in the south and southeast after the PDP defeat on March 28 and fears of violence.