ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) – The second day of vote counting in Nigeria’s bitterly contested presidential vote started late on Tuesday and electoral officials hope to announce later in the day who will govern Africa’s richest and biggest nation.
Early returns from half the states have President Goodluck Jonathan winning nine states and the Federal Capital Territory and Gen. Muhammadu Buhari winning nine states. But Buhari won 8.5 million votes to Jonathan’s 6.48 million. A candidate must take at least 50 percent of all votes and at least 25 percent of votes in two-thirds of the states to win.
About a dozen of the 18 remaining states still have to send results to the counting center in Abuja. Final results are hoped for by the end of the day but results from only a few of the remaining states have been delivered, electoral commission spokesman Kayode Idowu told The Associated Press.
It’s the first time in Nigeria’s history that a challenger has a real chance of defeating a sitting president. This is only the eighth election since independence from Britain in 1960.
Buhari swept the northern states of Kano and Kaduna, as expected, but margin of his victory was unexpected. In Kano, the state with the second-largest number of voters, Buhari won 1.9 million votes to Jonathan’s 216,000. In Kaduna, Buhari won 1.1 million votes to Jonathan’s 484,000.