Provisional results from Nigeria’s disputed presidential election showed Bola Tinubu from the ruling party closing in on victory, a Reuters tally of votes in 31 of the country’s 36 states and the federal capital showed on Tuesday.
With only 5 states left to declare, Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress party (APC) was ahead with about 35% or 7.5 million of valid votes counted, making it highly likely he would be declared winner on Tuesday of a weekend election to replace outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari, also APC.
Atiku Abubakar of the main opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) was trailing with 29% or nearly 6.2 million valid votes. Peter Obi of the smaller Labour Party got 25% or about 5.2 million votes. More results were expected to show the winner later on Tuesday.
Opposition parties have rejected the results as the product of a flawed process, which suffered multiple technical difficulties owing to the introduction of new technology by INEC.
The preliminary results announced in the states will again be presented at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)’s collation centre in the federal capital Abuja.
But INEC officers in Rivers State, the capital of Africa’s biggest oil industry, said they had suspended the announcement of results after state collation officer Charles Adias had received death threats via text message.
“When there are crises in the polling unit, the attack is on my phone that I am responsible. When BVAS (voter identification machines) fail to function, the attack is equally on my phone that I am responsible,” Adias told journalists, saying INEC would “reconvene” when his safety concerns had been addressed.
INEC in the capital Abuja said it would resume collating results at 2 p.m. (1300 GMT).
Nigerian electoral law says a candidate can win just by getting more votes than their rivals, provided they get 25% of the vote in at least two-thirds of the 36 states.
The election was also marred by violence in places, although seemingly not yet on the scale of previous ones.
INEC had promised to upload results directly from each polling unit to its website but most were unable to do so immediately.
By 1230 GMT, INEC had posted results from 83,906 polling units out of 176,846.
That meant results had to be collated manually inside ward and local government counting centres as in previous polls, problems observer missions also criticised as the result of poor planning.
There are fears frustrations over the process could boil over into violence.
In a normally bustling market on Lagos island, one of the most densely populated places in Africa, shops were shut and streets deserted on Tuesday morning.
