NIGERIA: President Olusegun Obasanjo took a commanding lead yesterday in early results from Nigeria's presidential election as opposition politicians accused authorities of ballot irregularities.
Mr Obasanjo's People's Democratic Party (PDP) was victorious in initial results from state governorship elections also held on Saturday, but foreign observers questioned an officially declared near-100 per cent turnout in the southern oil-rich Rivers state where the opposition had called a boycott.
Mr Obasanjo, a born-again Christian who won power in a military-supervised election in 1999 that ended 15 years of army rule, had won 3.3 million votes or 71 per cent, figures from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) showed.
Main challenger Mr Muhammadu Buhari, whose bastion is in the predominantly Muslim north of Africa's most populous country, had 1.2 million votes or 25 per cent.
Nigeria, which has spent most of its 43 years since independence from Britain under military rule, is trying to transfer power from one elected civilian government to another for the first time. Mr Obasanjo and Mr Buhari are both former military rulers.
The geographical spread of the votes counted so far in this country of 120 million people was not immediately clear.
But early results from governorship elections in Nigeria's 36 states showed Mr Obasanjo's PDP was in total command in five states in the south-east and his home south-west area.
To avoid a runoff ballot on April 26th, a candidate in the presidential poll must win a simple majority, as well as 25 per cent of the votes in at least 24 of the states.