Factbox: Results so far in Nigeria’s presidential election
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Nigeria’s electoral commission has started announcing state-by-state results from Saturday’s presidential election.
All three major parties have complained of irregularities. There have been reports of violence and intimidation, though not on the scale of previous elections.
Here are details of the election process and current leaders.
WHO ARE THE MAIN CANDIDATES?
Eighteen candidates are running for president but only three are seen as having a realistic chance. They are Bola Tinubu from the governing All Progressives Congress party (APC), Atiku Abubakar of the main opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and Peter Obi of the smaller Labour Party (LP).
A fourth contender, Rabiu Kwankwaso, of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP), is expected to do well in parts of the north.
WHO IS LEADING?
According to a Reuters tally of provisional results announced by electoral officials in 10 of Nigeria’s 36 states, Tinubu leads with about 3.29 million votes against 2.28 million for Abubakar and 818,000 for Obi.
HOW ARE THE VOTES TALLIED?
Results from 176,846 polling stations are being counted manually and then relayed electronically to the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) headquarters in Abuja, which posts them on its website.
The results are also being tallied at the ward, local government and state level. A returning officer from each state then travels to Abuja with a tally sheet, which will be compared against the results sent directly by polling stations to the national collation centre.
After tallies from all the states and the federal territory of Abuja are verified, the INEC chairman will announce the national results and declare a winner.
HOW DOES A CANDIDATE WIN?
To win the presidential election, a candidate only needs a simple majority, provided they have at least a quarter of the votes cast in at least 24 states. If no candidate achieves that, a runoff will be held within 21 days.
-Reuters
ABOUT: Nana Kwesi Coomson
[email protected] An Entrepreneur, Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Communications Executive and Philanthropist. Editor-in-Chief of www.233times.com. A Senior Journalist with Ghanaian Chronicle Newspaper. An alumnus of Adisadel College where he read General Arts. His first degree is in Bachelor of Arts - Political Science (major) and History (minor) from the University of Ghana. He holds MSc in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Energy with Public Relations (PR) from the Robert Gordon University in the United Kingdom. He is a 2018 Mandela Washington Fellow who studied at Clark Atlanta University in USA on the Business and Entrepreneurship track.
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