Nigeria's Jonathan takes big poll lead

Incumbent president fares well in mainly Christian south as vote count continues and violence is reported from north. Last Modified: 17 Apr 2011 17:44

video Early results in the Nigerian presidential polls show the incumbent, Goodluck Jonathan, leading in southern areas, while Muhammadu Buhari, the country's former military ruler, has attracted support from the country's Muslim north. Results continue to trickle in from what has largely been a peaceful presidential election, though violence has been reported from the north, where Buhari's supporters have expressed anger over perceived vote rigging. Early results on Sunday showed Jonathan had done well in much of the predominantly Christian south, including areas such as the most populous city of Lagos, where the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) had struggled in a parliamentary election a week ago. Reuters news agency said Jonathan had an "an unassailable" lead, having won a sufficient share of votes across the states by late afternoon to avoid an election runoff, assuming he also got the overall majority of the votes. So far, there has been no official reaction from other cadidates. The PDP has won every presidential vote since Nigeria returned to civilian rule in 1999. Al Jazeera's Yvonne Ndege, reporting the capital, Abuja, said: "It's safe to say that the cat is out of the bag, and that Jonathan has won this election." She reported earlier on Sunday that rioting had broken out in four of the country's 36 states, with the offices of the PDP being burnt down in one state after some voters suspected the party of vote rigging. "We're also told the official of the ruling party in another state had his home burnt down when some ballot boxes were found in his house," our correspondent said. "In Kano state, not far from Abuja, we're hearing that many voters refused to leave the polling stations, wanting to see all the votes counted. That caused some minor skirmishes." Crowd teargassed Al Jazeera's Ndege said that in the state of Taraba, police fired tear gas at a crowd that insisted on following the electoral commission's staff to a vote-collating centre to ensure results were not overturned. She also said that people speaking to Al Jazeera at polling stations were frustrated about living in a country that is the world's sixth largest exporter of oil, but where many still remain without basic services, such as electricity and clean water. "Corruption is also a major problem, and that's why people are acting and behaving so fervently, in terms of making sure that the vote is transparent, making sure it's free and fair," she said. Analysts say they are heartened by the fact that the poll is being taken seriously, but concerned at the possible repercussions of a north-south divide emerging in the results. "There's good news in this Nigerian presidential election: we're counting actual votes and people are interested in the count," Chidi Odinkalu, of the Open Society Justice Initiative, a non-governmental organisation, said. "And quite bad news: the country is badly divided, north vs south." 'Orderly and transparent' Festus Mogae, a former president of Bostwana and head of the Commonwealth observer mission monitoring the vote, told Al Jazeera he was "very impressed" with what he had seen, and described the elections as "orderly and transparent and therefore a pleasant surprise given that fact that is country has been notorious for flawed elections." He also said that the public has been "very, very patient and orderly". "Of course, I'm crossing my fingers, because the polls are not totally out, not all of them, and there have been isolated reports of violence but ... at the vast majority of polling stations, polling went very well," Mogae said. "Across the country it will be close," Nasir el-Rufai, a former government minister and Buhari supporter, told Reuters at a vote-counting centre in the capital Abuja. "My only fear is it will become a north-south issue if we see a situation where Buhari sweeps the north and Jonathan does well in the south. We may have to go to a runoff," he said. To win in the first round, a candidate needs a simple majority and a quarter of the vote in two thirds of the 36 states. There are more than 73 million registered voters and 120,000 polling stations. Final results could take days. A runoff between Jonathan and Buhari could risk polarising voters along regional lines in the country of 150 million, where ethnic and religious rivalries bubble near the surface. While international observers were positive about the elections, there were some reports of irregularities, including an Associated Press report that said boys who appeared to be under 18 - the voting age in Nigeria - were seen queuing to vote. Elsewhere, party officials helped people ink their fingers and mark their ballots. One party worker accompanied an elderly woman to drop off her ballot in the box despite regulations banning party workers from voting stations. And at one collation center in Lagos, volunteers carried blank ballots without supervision from election officials. Security forces were on high alert after an explosion at a police station in Maiduguri, in the country's northeast, early on Saturday before the polls were due to open - the second such attack in 24 hours.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies