{"id":33332,"date":"2019-02-26T22:23:33","date_gmt":"2019-02-26T22:23:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=33332"},"modified":"2019-02-26T22:23:33","modified_gmt":"2019-02-26T22:23:33","slug":"nigerias-buhari-ahead-in-presidential-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=33332","title":{"rendered":"Nigeria’s Buhari ahead in presidential race"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari has a strong lead in his bid for reelection, according to provisional vote results.<\/span><\/p>\n

An ongoing tally<\/a>by Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Tuesday evening showed Buhari, who is seeking a second term, was more than 1.5 million votes ahead at the halfway point of state-by-state announcements. He had won 15 of Nigeria’s 36 states at the time of publication with more than two thirds of states counted.<\/p>\n

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Votes being counted in Nigeria’s delayed vote<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

Buhari won Nigeria’s most populous state, Lagos, as well as Kaduna and Jigawa in his northwest heartland.<\/span><\/p>\n

The provisional results appeared to show that the 76-year-old former military ruler’s main rival, businessman and former vice president Atiku Abubakar, could no longer catch up.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To win the presidency, a candidate needs a majority of votes nationwide and at least 25 percent of support in two-thirds of Nigeria’s 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, otherwise there is a run-off.<\/span><\/p>\n

Official results are expected to be declared by the INEC on Wednesday.<\/span><\/p>\n

Opposition alleges fraud<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

Al Jazeera’s Jonah Hull, reporting from the Nigerian capital, Abuja,\u00a0<\/strong>said the INEC’s ongoing count strongly indicated\u00a0Abubakar had lost.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

“<\/span>The biggest exercise in democracy on the African continent ever has an unnoficial winner, President\u00a0Muhammadu Buhari,” he added.<\/span><\/p>\n

Buhari, from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), called during campaigning for voters to give him another chance to tackle gaping corruption, widespread insecurity and an economy still reeling from a recent recession in the nation of 190 million people.<\/p>\n

Abubakar’s\u00a0People’s Democratic Party (<\/span>PDP<\/span>) rejected the INEC’s results on Tuesday<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>alleging electoral fraud.<\/p>\n

PDP spokesman Tanimu Turaki said there should be an “immediate halt to the ongoing collation of results”, claiming data from voter card readers had been altered.<\/p>\n

Until data from the machines is made available to all parties, counting should stop, he told reporters at the party’s campaign headquarters.<\/p>\n

“The PDP predicates this demand on available evidence to the effect that data from the card readers are being reconfigured to suit the manipulations” of the ruling party, Turaki said.<\/p>\n

Abubakar also called for the cancellation of results in four states, Al Jazeera’s Hull reported.<\/span><\/p>\n

Vote marred by violence<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

Observers from the Economic Community of West African States, the African Union and the United Nations appealed to parties to wait for official results\u00a0to be announced before filing complaints.<\/p>\n

But Buhari’s campaign director for election monitoring,\u00a0Babatunde Fashola, told the Associated Press news agency Abubakar should accept his loss gracefully and concede.<\/p>\n

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Will voters punish Buhari for not tackling Nigeria’s oil spills?<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

Abubakar, a billionaire who made sweeping campaign promises to “make Nigeria work again,” also should provide evidence to back up claims that the ruling party manipulated the results, Fashola said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Voting in the poll took place on Saturday after a week-long delay which the election commission said was due to its inability to get ballot papers and result sheets to all parts of the country.<\/p>\n

The event was marred by violence, with at least 47 people killed since Saturday, according to the Situation Room, a monitoring organisation linking various civic groups.<\/p>\n

More than 260 people have been killed in total since the start of the election campaign in October.<\/p>\n

The toll is lower than in previous elections, but in the past the worst unrest broke out after results were announced.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\n SOURCE:
\n Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari has a strong lead in his bid for reelection, according to provisional vote results. An ongoing tallyby Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Tuesday evening showed Buhari, who is seeking a second term, was more than 1.5 million votes ahead at the halfway point of state-by-state announcements. He had won…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":33333,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}