Goodluck Jonathan to win Nigeria election outright

Goodluck Jonathan is set for election as Nigeria’s president with almost double the vote of his main rival, partial results suggest.

Figures provided by regional officials suggest he has garnered enough votes to avoid a run-off.

A BBC correspondent says there is a sense of relief and jubilation that the vote and count have been relatively calm, unlike in past years.

However, some results in individual states have been suspiciously high.

Mr Jonathan had staked his reputation on the election, repeatedly promising it would be free and fair.

Unless the national electoral commission declares a large chunk of the votes to be invalid, he is now on track to become Nigeria’s first elected president from the oil-producing Niger Delta region.

The Christian politician was appointed to the presidency last year, upon the death of incumbent Umaru Yar’Adua, whom he had served as vice-president.

‘99.63%’

To win at the first round, a candidate needs at least 25% of the vote in two-thirds of Nigeria’s 36 states.

According to regional results, Mr Jonathan has passed that threshold in at least 24 states. He polled 20.3m votes to the 10.4m cast for his nearest rival, General Muhammadu Buhari.

In Akwa Ibom state, he was credited with winning 95% and in Anambra it was 99%. In his home state, Bayelsa, he took 99.63%.

“Figures of 95% and above for one party suggest that these are fabricated figures and, personally, they worry me because they pose serious questions on the credibility of the election,” Jibrin Ibrahim of the Centre for Democracy and Development told AFP news agency.

Former government minister Nasir el-Rufai, a supporter of Gen Buhari, told Reuters: “In most of the south-east and south-south, no real elections took place.

“In the south-west and the north, the results have no relation to what happened at the polling units and we will prove it in due course.”

A spokesman for the general, Yinka Odumakin, also said irregularities had taken place but any challenge would come after the vote count.

‘A befitting election’

Mr Jonathan’s campaign team have said they will not publicly comment until the election commission has formally declared all the results in the capital Abuja, an announcement expected later on Monday.

While past polls have been marred by widespread violence and vote-fixing, Saturday’s appears to have generally gone smoothly.

Voters in many areas queued patiently for hours despite intense heat to cast their votes.

The head of the African Union observer team, former Ghanaian President John Kufuor, told the BBC he was satisfied.

“Nigeria hasn’t been served too well for decades electorally, but to our pleasant surprise we found the people of Nigeria generally are the security against this,” said Mr Kufuor.

“All of them co-operating to give the nation a befitting election.”

However, there was violence in parts of the north and officials’ homes were burned, amid rigging allegations.

A curfew was imposed on Sunday in Gombe state because of rioting. Unrest was also reported in parts of Adamawa and Bauchi states.

There were several explosions on polling day, including one at a hotel in Kaduna state and another in the Borno state capital of Maiduguri.

Source: BBC