Nigeria elections 2015: Muhammadu Buhari heading for victory

Nigerian opposition candidate Muhammadu Buhari is heading for a win against the incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan, with 14.6 million votes to Jonathan’s 11.3 million and only two out 36 states left to count, the latest tally showed.

If Buhari wins and Jonathan steps down, it would mark the first time in Nigeria’s history that an opposition party has democratically taken control of the country from the ruling party.

Electoral officials hope to announce later Tuesday who will govern Africa’s richest and biggest nation.

Buhari crucially carried Lagos state, Nigeria’s commercial hub with the largest number of voters, according to results announced Tuesday, after taking crushing wins in three states in the Muslim north, where he is revered.

The austere and strict retired general, who says he is a convert to democracy, for the first time won states in the southwest and even took one third of votes in a southeastern state — an unprecedented development that some say reflects more of an anti-Jonathan than a pro-Buhari sentiment.

Buhari’s showing in his fourth bid to become president was boosted by the formation of a coalition of major opposition parties 2 years ago. Its choice of Buhari as a single candidate presented the first real opportunity in the history of Nigeria to oust a sitting president.

“If indeed Buhari becomes president, it sends a clear message to the people in government that you cannot take the people of Nigeria for granted and that Nigerian democracy is maturing,” said journalist and political analyst Kadaria Ahmed.

Because of decades of military dictatorship, this is only the eighth election since the country won independence from Britain in 1960, and the fifth since democracy was restored in 1999.

Buhari, swept the northern states of Kano and Kaduna, as expected, but margin of his victory was unexpected. In Kano, the state with the second-largest number of voters, Buhari won 1.9 million votes to Jonathan’s 216,000. In Kaduna, Buhari won 1.1 million votes to Jonathan’s 484,000.

Source: Agencies