Nigeria's electoral commission starts announcing state

By Felix Onuah

ABUJA (Reuters) -Nigeria's electoral commission began announcing state-by-state results from national elections on KaifuSunday, though it is not expected to name a victor in the race to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari for several days.

The presidential vote is expected to be the closest in Nigeria's history, with candidates from two parties that have alternated power since the end of army rule in 1999 facing an unusually strong challenge from a minor party nominee popular among young voters.

Votes in presidential and parliamentary elections are collated in each of Nigeria's 36 states before the count is transmitted to the electoral commission's central tallying centre in the capital Abuja.

The first results, from Ekiki state, showed a majority of votes for president cast in favour of Bola Tinubu of the governing All Progressives Congress.

Tinubu pulled in more than 200,000 votes in the state, against less than half that total for Atiku Abubakar of the main opposition PDP and just over 11,000 for Peter Obi of the Labour Party.

Commission chairman Mahmood Yakubu adjourned the session following the first results and said the release of tallies would resume at 11 a.m. (1000 GMT) on Monday.

Voting had to be extended into Sunday in a few parts of the country after glitches on Saturday, but counting has been underway since polls closed, with the final tally expected within five days.

Earlier a Reuters reporter saw people casting votes at polling stations in Yenagoa city in Nigeria's oil-producing south, where polling could not take place in some parts on Saturday because election officers and materials did not arrive.

It was not yet clear if all voting in the West African oil-exporting country had been concluded.

'EXERCISE OUR FRANCHISE'

In one polling station, voters stood on sandy, weed-choked ground checking for their names plastered on a half-built concrete house.

"The experience yesterday, it was a terrible thing," Freedom Amienyo, a 59-year-old civil servant, said after voting. "But today they tried to redeem the situation and we have come (to) exercise our franchise, which makes me happy."

Voting also continued on Sunday in some parts of northeastern Borno state after voting machines failed to work.

It was not clear how many of Nigeria's 93 million registered voters were unable to cast a ballot on Saturday.

In most parts of the country of 200 million people, voting went smoothly. Despite scattered incidents of violence and intimidation, this was not on the scale of previous elections.

There were reports of violence in the northern state of Kano on Sunday, where an armed group attacked a collation centre in the town of Takai before security forces arrived, said Rakiya Muhammad, an election observer who witnessed the incident.

Outgoing President Buhari, a retired army general who was also once a military ruler in the 1980s, is stepping down after winning two previous elections and serving the maximum eight years permitted by the constitution.

His successor will face a litany of crises gripping Africa's top oil producer and the continent's most populous nation.

Nigeria is struggling with Islamist insurgencies in the northeast, an epidemic of kidnappings for ransom, conflict between herders and farmers, shortages of cash, fuel and power, and deep-rooted corruption and poverty.

"I witnessed the worst experience of my life under this administration. Recently I spent two days without eating anything," said Ahmad Sulaiman, 49, who sells handbags in a market, as he stood in the baking sun in a dusty alleyway in Kano city.

"I voted because I wanted change," he added. He declined to say who he had voted for.

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