Nigeria ruling party candidate takes election lead
Lagos, Nigeria (AFP):
Nigeria’s ruling party candidate Bola Tinubu took an early lead in the race for the presidency, according to initial tallies on Monday, after a tight election marked by long delays and an opposition walkout over fraud accusations.
Former Lagos governor Tinubu faced main opposition party PDP’s Atiku Abubakar in Saturday’s vote, but Labour Party’s Peter Obi tested the two others as a third contender for the first time in Nigeria’s modern democracy.
Highlighting his challenge to APC and PDP dominance, Obi won the key state of Lagos, a bastion of Tinubu’s support which also has the largest number of registered voters.
With President Muhammadu Buhari stepping down, many Nigerians voted with the hope that a new leader will do a better job tackling insecurity, economic malaise and widening poverty in Africa’s most populous country.
Voting on Saturday was mostly peaceful, but thugs ransacked some polling stations, many others opened very late, and delays slowed the uploading of results to an official website meant to promote transparency.
Counting was still ongoing late Monday, with 14 out of 36 states tallied, but the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said Tinubu had won six states, Abubakar five states and Obi three states.
Tinubu, of the APC party, was ahead with more than 3.8 million votes, while Abubakar had 3 million and Obi 1.6 million, according to INEC figures.
Fraud fears
Votes for the presidency were tallied by hand at local polling stations, with results uploaded online to INEC’s central database IReV.
But long delays in voting getting underway and the slow pace of uploading state-by-state counting fuelled accusations of manipulation.
PDP and other party agents on Monday walked out of a counting centre in Abuja.
“We are not here to rubber stamp the electoral fraud that has been prepared by INEC and APC,” PDP official Dino Melaye said. “We are saying that INEC is compromised.”
Nigeria has a long history of vote rigging and ballot buying, though INEC said new technology would help curtail electoral malpractice.
Labour campaign director Akin Osuntokun called for INEC to suspend announcing the results because of the manipulation of tallies.
An EU observer mission said INEC “lacked efficient planning and transparency during critical stages” and reduced public trust with delays in voting and results.
Have Your Say!
Have you been affected by the issues raised in this story? Please share your experiences by emailing haveyoursay@soundvision.com.
Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a Muslim Network TV’s representative. You can also get in touch in the following ways:
Tweet: @MuslimNetworkTV
We must take charge of our narrative. Research indicates that 92% of their Muslim coverage is negative. Help us change that.
