{"id":34843,"date":"2019-03-09T10:24:19","date_gmt":"2019-03-09T10:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=34843"},"modified":"2019-03-09T10:24:19","modified_gmt":"2019-03-09T10:24:19","slug":"nigeria-elections-local-polls-open-to-elect-governors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=34843","title":{"rendered":"Nigeria elections: Local polls open to elect governors"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"body-200771816342556199\" readability=\"104.541552009\">\n<p class=\"speakable\">Nigerians are voting on Saturday to elect governors and state assembly members,\u00a0two weeks after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/people\/muhammadu-buhari.html\">Muhammadu Buhari<\/a> secured a second term in a delayed presidential vote.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">Elections for governors are being held in 29 of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/country\/nigeria.html\">Nigeria&#8217;s<\/a> 36 states, for all state assemblies, along with the administrative councils in the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">Polling stations opened at 07:00 GMT and close at 13:00 GMT, with results expected early next week.<\/p>\n<p>Governors are among the most influential politicians in Nigeria, which is Africa&#8217;s biggest oil producer and has the continent&#8217;s largest economy. Many of them control budgets larger than those of small nations.<\/p>\n<p>With so much at stake, many previous governorship elections have been marred by violence, including shootings and armed gangs snatching ballot boxes.<\/p>\n<p>Buhari, of the All Progressives Congress (APC), beat Atiku Abubakar of the People&#8217;s Democratic Party (PDP) in last month&#8217;s presidential election with 15.2 million votes to 11.3 million, though on a turnout of just 35.6 percent.<\/p>\n<p>The president is expected to consolidate his February 23 victory, in which he won 19 states to secure a second and final four-year term of office.<\/p>\n<p>His APC party currently controls 22 states while the main opposition PDP has 13, and the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) has one.<\/p>\n<p>State-level elections are often predicted to broadly mirror presidential polling and this year comes amid concerns about the role of security forces during the vote.<\/p>\n<p>During the presidential and parliamentary polling, there were reports of violence, vote-buying, voter intimidation and ballot box vandalism in some states.<\/p>\n<p>At least 53 people were killed, according to the Situation Room umbrella group of more than 70 civil society monitoring groups, which said safety fears contributed to a low turnout.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nigerians are voting on Saturday to elect governors and state assembly members,\u00a0two weeks after Muhammadu Buhari secured a second term in a delayed presidential vote. Elections for governors are being held in 29 of Nigeria&#8217;s 36 states, for all state assemblies, along with the administrative councils in the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja. Polling stations&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34843","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=34843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34843\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}