Pressmediaofindia
Related Articles
28-02-2023
LAGOS: Nigeria’s electoral commission has started announcing state-by-state results from Saturday’s presidential election.
All three major parties have complained of irregularities. There have been reports of violence and intimidation, though not on the scale of previous elections.
Here are details of the election process and current leaders.
Eighteen candidates are running for president but only three are seen as having a realistic chance. They are Bola Tinubu from the governing All Progressives Congress party (APC), Atiku Abubakar of the main opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and Peter Obi of the smaller Labour Party (LP).
A fourth contender, Rabiu Kwankwaso, of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP), is expected to do well in parts of the north.
According to a report tally of provisional results announced by electoral officials in 10 of Nigeria’s 36 states, Tinubu leads with about 3.29 million votes against 2.28 million for Abubakar and 818,000 for Obi.
Results from 176,846 polling stations are being counted manually and then relayed electronically to the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) headquarters in Abuja, which posts them on its website.
The results are also being tallied at the ward, local government and state level. A returning officer from each state then travels to Abuja with a tally sheet, which will be compared against the results sent directly by polling stations to the national collation centre.
After tallies from all the states and the federal territory of Abuja are verified, the INEC chairman will announce the national results and declare a winner.
A third-party candidate in Nigeria’s tightly contested presidential election has caused a major upset by winning in its biggest city, Lagos, results from state election officials show.
The Labour Party’s Peter Obi narrowly defeated the ruling party’s Bola Tinubu in his heartland, they say.
Tinubu is a former governor of Lagos state and hopes to use his record there as the basis of his presidential bid.
The result still has to be confirmed by the head of the election commission.
However, Tinubu has accepted defeat in Lagos and said that as a democrat, he was bound to accept the outcome of any election.
“People have a right to vote for the candidate of their choice,” he said in a statement released by his campaign team.
He also appealed for calm from his supporters after his loss, following reports of violence in parts of Lagos against traders from the Igbo community, like Obi.
Obi’s apparent victory in Lagos, though a major breakthrough for a third-party candidate, is not necessarily a huge surprise. The city is home to many young, educated people, as well as a large Igbo population – all groups widely seen as backing his presidential bid. (Int’l News Desk)
