Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest person, said the turnout in Saturday’s Nigerian presidential election was the highest he’d seen in more than two decades.
(Bloomberg) —
Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest person, said the turnout in Saturday’s Nigerian presidential election was the highest he’d seen in more than two decades.
“The turnout is very, very impressive,” he told Channels TV after voting in the commercial hub, Lagos. “I’ve been voting since 1999 when we returned to democracy and this time around I’ve seen much more than the usual times.”
Dangote’s comments echo similar statements made by by World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who tweeted after casting her ballot. “The turnout is unbelievable, the largest I have ever seen in all the years I have voted in the village,” Okonjo-Iweala said in her Tweet.
The Independent Nigerian Electoral Commission is yet to disclose the voter turnout figures.
Voting Draws to Close, Ballot Count Begins (Feb. 25, 4:28 p.m.)
Nigeria’s electoral commission ruled out extending the time for citizens to cast their ballots in Saturday’s election, saying polling stations wouldn’t accept those who arrived after 2:30 p.m. local time. That’s despite countrywide delays and some polling stations not opening until hours after the official start time — by 4:30 p.m. officials were done counting ballots at some sites, while others had hundreds of people in line waiting to cast theirs.
“As Nigerians are aware, the prevailing context for the conduct of the election is a bit challenging, but there is also a shared determination on the part of the commission to ensure that the elections hold, and that they’re free, fair and credible,” Mahmood Yakubu, chairman of the Independent Nigerian Electoral Commission, said at a press conference in Abuja, the capital.
Voting was supposed to be begin at 8:30 a.m. and be concluded within six hours but many Nigerians reported that the process only began at 11 a.m. or later. All those who had lined up by the cutoff time will be able to participate, Yakubu said. He blamed delays on logistical challenges and “perennial insecurity in the country.”
Yiaga Africa, a nonprofit monitoring the elections, said just 41% of the polling units were open as of 12:45 p.m. local time.
President Buhari Reveals Vote (Feb. 25, 3 p.m.)
Video footage showed outgoing Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari presenting his ballot paper to onlookers in his hometown in the northern Katsina State. A statement emailed by Buhari’s spokesman confirmed he had “displayed” the document with a “thumb print” for Bola Tinubu, the presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress, before depositing it in a ballot box.
The West African nation’s electoral legislation requires a secret ballot, saying no-one should “communicate at any time to any other person information obtained in a polling unit as to the candidate to whom a voter is about to vote or has voted for.” Violators are liable to receive a 100,000-naira fine or a three-month prison sentence. It’s unclear if the provision applies to those who reveal their own votes.
Bright Side of Nigeria’s Cash Shortage: Vote Buying Declines (Feb. 25, 2:15 p.m.)
Vote buying have been standard in most Nigerian elections, with scenes of party operatives handing out anything from 500 naira to 10,000 naira ($1.09to $21.70) notes to voters commonplace outside polling stations.
But this year is different — an acute shortage of naira notes that has crippled Africa’s biggest economy in the run up to the election seems to have sapped political parties’ ability to dispense cash. There wasn’t a bill to be seen at one polling unit in the Maitama neighborhood in the capital, Abuja, that was the scene of blatant payments during the 2019 election.
The nation’s electoral commission has vowed to fight vote buying and there have been television advertisements supported by the MacArthur Foundation, a US nonprofit, exhorting voters not to take cash.
Glitches Dog Voting Process (Feb. 25, 12:33 p.m.)
Voting was delayed by hours in many areas due to the electronic system to verify voters malfunctioning and election workers arriving late.
Voters countrywide reported problems with the new Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, or BVAS, which is meant to smooth out the electoral process. Instead, many of the devices, which don’t need internet connection, weren’t accrediting citizens — and the governor of oil-rich Rivers State in the southeast.
Nyesom Wike was seen waiting 20 minutes to cast his ballot in the state capital, Port Harcourt, while a person mopped sweat from his brow. He was asked to come back later while more than 100 people remained in the queue behind him. World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala tweeted about her wait time at another polluing unit.
New Electronic Voting System Hiccups (Feb. 25, 10:45 a.m.)
The election is the first national contest to use new technology meant to improve transparency and curb rampant rigging that has marred past votes. The results will also be electronically transmitted to a server controlled by the electoral commission, which may also enable it to declare a winner sooner than in past polls.
The Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, or BVAS, authenticates voters through their fingerprint and facial recognition, and is supposed to allow only those who are validly registered to cast their ballots. The electoral commission said it had fixed bugs in the system that were exposed when it was used in state elections last year.
“The 2023 presidential elections is a litmus test for the new electoral law, especially on the deployment of electoral technology, and INEC’s power to review election results declared involuntarily or in violation of electoral guidelines” said Yiaga, a non-governmental organization that’s monitoring the vote.
Voting Starts for New President (Feb. 25, 9:02 a.m.)
Nigerians began voting on Saturday in one of the closest elections since the West African nation’s return to democracy two decades ago. About 87.2 million people are eligible to cast ballots at the more than 175,000 polling stations.
While 18 candidates are vying to succeed Buhari the race will come down to three contenders — Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party and outsider candidate Peter Obi of the Labour Party.
–With assistance from Mike Cohen.
(Yiaga Africa corrected time of data collection on polling stations in a previous version of the story.)
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