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Jalingo – Youths angry at the Nigerian government’s failure to fight Islamic extremists threw stones Thursday at President Goodluck Jonathan’s electioneering convoy in the eastern town of Jalingo, breaking windshields and windows on several vehicles. An AP reporter was unable to see if anyone was hurt. Police used tear gas and whips to disperse the mob.

From Jalingo, Jonathan flew to Yola, capital of Adamawa state, where officials had declared the route of his motorcade a no-go area. The presidential cavalcade already had been stoned in northern Katsina city and northeast Bauchi last week. Youths in Bauchi flung shoes and plastic bottles at Jonathan’s podium at a rally.

In Jalingo, soldiers guarded billboards and posters of Jonathan, who is running for re-election on February 14. Protesters shouted that the troops should instead be fighting the Boko Haram insurgents blamed for the deaths of at least 10,000 people in the past year.

“Why are they using soldiers and other security operatives? They should be deployed to Sambisa and fight with Boko Haram, not with innocent civilians,” one youth yelled as he tore down a poster of a smiling Jonathan.

Sambisa Forest is where the insurgents have camps and where they are believed to be holding some of the 276 schoolgirls abducted from a boarding school in the remote town of Chibok in April — a mass kidnapping that brought international outrage.

Dozens of the girls escaped on their own but 219 remain missing, a reminder of the failures of Nigeria’s government and military.

At a rally in Yola, Jonathan promised his government will do more to help some of the million-plus people driven from their homes in the 5-year-old insurgency.

“We are totally committed to the liberation of Adamawa state,” Jonathan pledged.

But Adamawa state legislator Adamu Kamale complained on Wednesday that seven villages and Michika town have been under attack by Boko Haram since Friday and that he has appealed in vain for soldiers to come and fight the extremists.

It is unclear if displaced people will be able to vote. Hundreds of thousands have fled across borders. And it is not known how many remain trapped in more than 100 north-eastern village and towns held by the insurgents.

Meanwhile, Nigeria should delay next month’s elections to give organisers more time to distribute millions of biometric ID cards to voters, the country’s top security official said on Thursday.

Sambo Dasuki, President Jonathan’s National Security Advisor, said he had told the chair of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that a postponement within the three months allowed by the law would be a good idea.

The main opposition coalition said it would oppose any postponement, and the electoral commission said it had not received any such official communication from Dasuki.

The elections will be the first where Nigeria’s 68.8 million voters must have a biometric cards – a measure introduced to guard against fraud that has plagued past polls.

But there have been technical glitches in data collection and officials have not explained how they will hold the election in parts of the northeast gripped by a violent uprising by Islamist Boko Haram rebels.

How Africa’s biggest economy conducts this poll will be closely watched by investors and foreign powers, amid the uprising and an economic crisis linked to low oil prices.

Dasuki, speaking at London think-tank Chatham House, said INEC had distributed 30 million cards in the past year but                               had another 30 million to hand out. – Al Jazeera.