LOME: Togo votes for a new president on Saturday, with the incumbent Faure Gnassingbe seeking a third term in office to extend his family's grip on power into a second half-century.
Polling stations in the tiny West African nation open at 0700 GMT, with some 9,000 police and soldiers on patrol, and with borders shut until Sunday morning for security reasons.
Gnassingbe, 48, has been in power since the death of his father, Gnassingbe Eyadema, in 2005, winning contested elections that year and five years later.
Fears of election-linked violence are still fresh in the memory in Togo after some 500 people were killed and thousands more injured in the disputed 2005 vote, according to the UN.
The government announced the closure of land borders from 2100 GMT on Friday until 0600 GMT on Sunday "to ensure optimal security conditions" for the elections.
Armoured military vehicles were seen in the streets of the capital, Lome, on Friday, AFP journalists reported.
Some 3.5 million of Togo's seven million people are registered to vote. They will choose between Gnassingbe and his beaten opponent from last time round, opposition leader Jean-Pierre Fabre.
On the campaign trail, Gnassingbe vaunted his introduction of free primary schools and infrastructure projects such as new roads.
But Fabre, who heads a five-party coalition called Combat for Political Change (CAP 2015), has called for regime change after 48 years of unbroken rule by the president and his father before him.
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