The Nigerian presidential elections of 2019 have been a source of much anticipation and speculation. With nearly 90 million eligible voters, the country is hoping for a new leader to tackle the issues of insecurity, economic malaise, and widening poverty. On Saturday, the voting process was mostly peaceful, although some polling stations were ransacked and many opened late in Lagos and other cities. Voters stayed overnight to watch over the initial count at polling stations, and voting continued in some parts of the country on Sunday.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced the first results state by state on Sunday, with the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate Bola Tinubu winning small southwestern Ekiti state, and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) coming in second. However, slow uploading of results to INEC’s website has caused worries of malpractice in a country with a history of ballot rigging and vote buying. The platform IReV was meant to improve transparency, but by Monday morning only 30 percent of the results from around 176,000 polling centres nationwide had been submitted.
The most votes in the commercial hub of Lagos state, which houses Africa’s biggest city, were won by Labour Party candidate Peter Obi with 582,454 votes, just ahead of Tinubu’s 572,606 votes. Obi’s campaign attracted youths and urban voters fed up with corrupt traditional politics, and called on voters to reject the two parties that have run Nigeria for a quarter of a century.
To win the presidency, a candidate must get the most votes and also win at least 25 percent of votes cast in two-thirds of Nigeria’s 36 states. Voting is usually determined by large key states such as Lagos and northwestern Kano and Kaduna. As the final tallies for the presidential race could take days, PDP has accused the ruling APC governors of pressuring INEC over results in southeast and in parts of Lagos.
The Nigerian presidential elections have been a source of much anticipation and speculation, and it remains to be seen who will be chosen as the new leader to tackle the country’s issues. With slow uploading of results to INEC’s website raising worries of malpractice, it is important that the voting process is transparent and fair.