Nigeria’s electoral commission released the results for just one of 36 states on Sunday night as the country’s belated election to elect a new president drew to a close.
Results from 35 other states and Abuja were still pending. This followed logistical issues and safety concerns that caused delays in voting. Although voting was due to end on Saturday, people across much of the country continued to cast their ballots in Sunday’s general election, which also included the election of a new national lawmaker.
“We are aware that many more states will close tonight [tallies] coming to Abuja,” said Mahmood Yakubu, chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), in the capital.
Yakubu then adjourned the session and said more results would follow from Monday at 11:00 a.m. local time (1000 GMT/UTC).
Bola Tinubu far ahead in the small state of Ekiti
In the western state of Ekiti, one of the smallest and most sparsely populated in the country, the three putative frontrunners nationally led the race.
Incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari is leaving office after serving the maximum two terms allowed.
The candidate for Buhari’s All Progressives Congress Party is 70-year-old Bola Tinubu. He comfortably led in Ekiti by 201,494 votes, according to the commission.
Atiku Abubakar, 76, represents Nigeria’s other traditional force, the People’s Democratic Party; he had secured 89,554 votes in Ekiti.
Tinubu is a former governor of Lagos, Abubakar a former vice president.
And the surprise third-place finisher, the Labor Party’s Peter Obi, who had particularly appealed to young people, was down to third place with 11,397 votes.
However, the state of Ekiti represents only a tiny fraction of the nearly 90 million Nigerians who are eligible to vote in Africa’s most populous country. Voting behavior can also vary greatly from region to region in a country with a predominantly Christian south and a Muslim north.
Amaka Okoye on what to expect at the vote count
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Questions, concerns about delays for INEC
Abubakar asked INEC to upload the results immediately after saying some state governors were trying to compromise the results.
“It will do Nigerians a disservice and deny democracy if anyone undermines the will of the people, as freely expressed in their voices yesterday,” he said in a statement.
Abubakar claimed massive cheating in 2019 after his loss to Buhari.
An observer group, Yiaga Africa, also questioned the delays and asked INEC to provide more details on the reasons.
“We have observed multiple levels of irregularities that, frankly, as an organization we can no longer excuse,” Cynthia Mbamalu, co-founder of Yiaga, said at a news conference. “As a civil society group that has invested heavily in building trust in the process and trust in INEC, we also have a responsibility to hold the Electoral Commission accountable for the irregularities we have observed.”
INEC, meanwhile, said the problems uploading results to its IReV data page were the result of “technical issues” and that there was no risk of tampering.
“The Commission would like to reassure Nigerians that the challenges are not the result of any intrusion or sabotage of our systems,” it said in a statement. “It is important to avoid statements and actions that could inflame the community at this time.”
msh/jcg (AFP, AP, Portal)