Nigeria ruling party takes lead in election

LAGOS: Nigeria’s ruling party candidate, former Lagos governor Bola Tinubu, extended his lead for the presidency on Tuesday after a disputed weekend election but opposition parties called for the ballot to be scrapped alleging massive manipulation of tallies.

With President Muhammadu Buhari stepping down, many Nigerians hoped a clean vote would open the way to a leader able to tackle insecurity, ease economic malaise and manage poverty in Africa´s most populous country.

Voting on Saturday was mostly peaceful but was troubled by long delays at many polling stations, and technical hitches disrupted uploading of tallies to a central website, fuelling worries over vote rigging.

All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate Tinubu faced main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate Atiku Abubakar and a surprise third challenger, the Labour Party´s Peter Obi, whose campaign with a message of change attracted younger voters.

With official results from 22 of Nigeria´s 36 states, including the capital Abuja, Tinubu won nine states with 5.7 million votes against PDP´s Abubakar at seven states with 4.4 million votes and Obi at five states and the capital with 2.9 million ballots.