On Sunday, Nigeria’s electoral commission began releasing state-by-state results from the national elections, but it is not expected to declare a winner in the race to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari for several days.
The Nigeria 2023 presidential elections are anticipated to be the closest in Nigeria’s history, with candidates from two parties that have alternated power since the end of army rule in 1999 facing a minor party nominee who is popular among young voters.
Votes from presidential and parliamentary elections are collected in each of Nigeria’s 36 states before the count is transmitted to the electoral commission’s central tallying centre in Abuja.
The first results, from Ekiti state, showed that Bola Tinubu of the All-Progressives Congress received a majority of votes for the presidency.
Tinubu garnered more than 200,000 votes in the state, while Atiku Abubakar of the main opposition PDP received less than half that total and Peter Obi of the Labour Party received just over 11,000 votes. However, all three parties have expressed complaints about irregularities.
The Labour party criticized the electoral commission for not directly uploading results from each polling unit to its website, as it had promised to ensure transparency. Over 24 hours after polls were meant to close, many polling stations had yet to upload their results. Civil society organizations criticized the error and the failure of several polling stations to open on time.
INEC apologized for the glitches and said that the results viewing portal had been relatively slow and unsteady due to technical hitches. Both the PDP and APC complained that local INEC officials were being pressured to alter results before submitting them.
There were also incidents of violence and intimidation, although seemingly not on the scale of previous elections. On Sunday, soldiers intervened after 15 men pretending to be INEC officials stormed a voting collation centre in the Alimosho neighbourhood of Lagos, attacking party agents with knives and sticks.
Voting had to be extended into Sunday in a few parts of the country due to glitches on Saturday, but counting has been underway since polls closed with the final tally expected within five days. In most parts of the country, voting went smoothly, but there were reports of violence in the northern state of Kano, where an armed group attacked a collation centre in the town of Takai before security forces arrived.
Outgoing President Buhari, a retired army general who was once a military ruler in the 1980s, is stepping down after winning two previous elections and serving the maximum eight years permitted by the constitution. His successor will face a host of crises plaguing Africa’s top oil producer and the continent’s most populous nation, including Islamist insurgencies in the northeast, kidnappings for ransom, conflicts between herders and farmers, shortages of cash, fuel, and power, as well as deep-rooted corruption and poverty.
Nigeria 2023 presidential elections – who are the two main parties ?
All Progressives Congress (APC): The APC is Nigeria’s ruling political party and was formed in 2013 as a merger of four opposition parties. The party’s ideology is centred around promoting progressive governance, fighting corruption, and improving the economy. The current President of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, is a member of the APC.
People’s Democratic Party (PDP): The PDP is Nigeria’s main opposition party and was in power from 1999 to 2015 before losing to the APC. The party’s ideology is centred around social democracy, with a focus on promoting inclusive governance, economic development, and social justice. Notable past PDP leaders include former President Goodluck Jonathan and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.
Image Credit : AP News
