By Khulile Thwala
The Nigerian elections are getting interesting as Peter Obi has claimed the first gauntlet of the tight battle.
Obi’s ambition to become Nigeria’s president got a boost when he claimed victory in Lagos, the country’s economic powerhouse and home state of his main rival Bola Tinubu.
Obi, of the Labour Party, beat ruling party candidate Tinubu, a former Lagos governor who made the state the cornerstone of his presidential campaign.
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Tinubu won in two other South-Western states, although votes are still being counted with some yet to even cast their ballots, prompting sharp criticism of the country’s electoral commission.
As of Monday afternoon, just three of Nigeria’s 36 states had declared their results. The weekend’s poll was blighted by delays and violence in Lagos. Armed men fired gunshots at one polling station in the Surulere district, sending people scampering for safety.
The attackers made off with the presidential ballot box. Other polling stations in Surulere and the upmarket Lekki district also suffered violence, with some voters reporting that they were being intimidated to vote for a certain party.
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Nigeria’s electoral commission was forced to apologise for delays that have slowed the collection and announcement of the results for what is seen as the most closely fought election in the country’s democratic era.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) acknowledged that its online portal for viewing results had been “slow and unsteady”, as it complained about the difficulties in scaling up the system trialed in last year’s state election.
