Nigeria election: first results trickling in, Obi wins key Lagos state

Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has started announcing state-by-state results from Saturday’s presidential election but the slow process of uploading the results to INEC’s website has fueled worries of malpractice in the country.

However, according to the latest reports, Peter Obi of the Labor Party has gotten the most votes in the commercial hub of Lagos State, which houses Africa’s biggest city. Obi’s campaign attracted young and urban voters fed up with corrupt traditional politics.

This is Nigeria’s most highly contested presidential election in history, pitting Labor Party’s Peter Obi against Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, and Bola Tinubu of Nigeria’s All Progressives Congress party.

Over 30 hours after voting ended in Nigeria, voters and candidates are frustrated and anxious as the election results portal is not showing results from several states. This has led to all three major parties to complain of irregularities. There have been reports of violence and intimidation across the country, though not on the scale of previous elections. The INEC has acknowledged the glitches in its results viewing platform (IReV), but it has been unable to quell fears that this could be stemming from cyber attacks or system sabotage.

Voting in some parts of Africa’s most powerful economy, as was the case in Kenya, was disrupted by malfunctioning biometric voting machines on 25 February. There were reports of stolen voting machines in several parts of the country and scattered scenes of violence. Nearly 90 million were eligible to vote in the elections to choose a successor to President Muhammadu Buhari, with many hoping for a new leader to tackle insecurity, economic malaise and widening poverty.