-Anietie Udobit,Abuja
Votes counting have begun after a tightly contested election on Saturday, with three frontrunners competing for the presidency in a ballot marred by long delays.
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Nearly 90 million people were eligible to vote for Nigeria’s next president, with many Nigerians hoping their new leader would tackle a widening security crisis, the sluggish economy and growing poverty.
For the first time since the end of military rule in 1999, a third serious candidate has emerged to challenge the dominance of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
The three-way race sees former Lagos governor and APC candidate Bola Tinubu facing PDP’s Atiku Abubakar, a former vice president, and surprise third party candidate, Labour’s Peter Obi, a one-time Anambra State governor.
In Lagos and other cities, eager crowds gathered to watch counting in polling centres, where ballots were tallied by hand before they were sent on electronically.
“Polling units in a large number of areas have closed and we started the counting of ballot papers,” INEC Chairman Mahmood Yakubu said.
Voting was meant to end at 1330 GMT, but by nightfall, angry voters were still waiting to cast ballots after INEC started late or problems with identification technology disrupted them.
INEC has not said when official results will be announced though it is expected over the next few days as tallies are uploaded on an online portal.
The success of Nigeria’s vote will be closely watched in West Africa where coups in Mali and Burkina Faso and growing Islamist militancy have taken the region’s democracy back a step.
Whoever wins Nigeria’s presidency must manage Africa’s largest economy beset by a host of complex problems, from a grinding jihadist war and bandit militias and separatists to high inflation and widening poverty.
But Saturday’s vote went ahead mostly peacefully.
Several Lagos polling booths were ransacked, according to INEC, and voting at 141 polling units in southern Bayelsa State would take place on Sunday after the ballot was disrupted.
Voters will also cast their ballot for Nigeria’s two houses of parliament, the National Assembly and Senate.
Vote counting started even as some were still waiting at polling stations to cast their ballot.