Counting is under way in Nigeria’s fiercely contested general election, with the first results expected on Monday.
The battle between President Goodluck Jonathan and opposition candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, is the most closely fought in the country’s history.
Counting stopped just before midnight Monday with Muhammadu Buhari taking a significant lead over the Nigerian incumbent president, Goodluck Jonathan. Buhari, the opposition candidate, led with 8,520,436 votes against Jonathan’s 6,488,210, based on returns from 18 out of Nigeria’s 36 states plus the capital city. Turnout was consistently higher in the strongholds of Buhari, who ruled Nigeria in 1983-85 as a military dictator.
If the trend continues, Jonathan would be the first incumbent to suffer defeat at the ballot box in the history of Africa’s biggest democracy.
Another 18 states still have to send results to the counting center in Abuja, electoral commissioner Attahiru Jega announced. He said the count resumes at 10am local time on Tuesday.
However, the overall result was still too early to forecast, with Mr Jonathan recording similarly spectacular victories in his own southern Christian strongholds. He won 95 per cent of the vote in his native Rivers state, home of much of Nigeria’s oil and gas industry.
Meanwhile, In Adamawa State of Nigeria, Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Malam Baba-Abba Yusuf, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday in Yola that so far, no result had been released for the Presidential and NASS elections in Adamawa.
A News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) correspondent who visited the collation centre for Michika/Madagali Federal Constituency at Ribadu Square in Yola said as at 9.30 a.m., officials were still waiting for results from some wards.
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, congratulated the west African nation for holding a “largely peaceful and orderly” ballot but called on citizens to “maintain a peaceful atmosphere and to exercise patience”. He condemned attacks carried out by Islamist group Boko Haram and other militants attempting to disrupt the polls.
John Kerry, the US secretary of state, and his British counterpart, Philip Hammond, said they had seen no evidence of systemic manipulation of the process but warned in a joint statement that “there are disturbing indications that the collation process – where the votes are finally counted – may be subject to deliberate political interference”.
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