Opposition candidate Peter Obi has announced his own victory after a presidential election that was beset by mishaps in Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria. “We won the election and we will prove it to the Nigerians,” Obi said Thursday in the capital, Abuja. According to the official result, Obi was in third place with 25 percent.
On Wednesday, the electoral authority declared the influential former governor of the mega-metropolis Lagos, Bola Tinubu from the governing party APC, the winner of the weekend’s election with 36 percent of the vote.
Opposition candidate wants to go to court
Obi, who has a lot of support, especially among city dwellers and well-educated young people, with his small Labor Party, which is considered an outsider, wants to go to court because the handling of the election results violated the guidelines. “We will exhaust all legal and peaceful ways to regain our mandate,” announced the 61-year-old.
The opposition in Africa’s largest economy, which has been plagued by numerous crises, accuses the electoral authority of problems and possible fraud in the transmission of the results, which were not – as intended – uploaded electronically, but were sometimes brought personally to the capital days later. Election observers criticized poor planning and a lack of transparency. A record 87 million of the country’s 220 million people registered to vote, but turnout was just 27 percent, lower than ever.
