Buhari in front after half of Nigeria election results declared

Muhammadu Buhari took a significant lead over the Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan, on Monday night with half of the results declared in a fiercely contested general election.

Buhari, the opposition candidate, led with 8,520,436 votes against Jonathan’s 6,488,210, based on returns from 18 out of Nigeria’s 36 states plus the capital city. Turnout was consistently higher in the strongholds of Buhari, who ruled Nigeria in 1983-85 as a military dictator.

If the trend continues, Jonathan would be the first incumbent to suffer defeat at the ballot box in the history of Africa’s biggest democracy. The international community has called for a fair and peaceful election that would send a signal to the rest of the continent.

The first official results declared on Monday gave Jonathan’s People’s Democratic party (PDP) victory over Buhari’s All Progressives Congress (APC) in Etiki state. But it was clear this would not be another walkover for the governing party when Buhari won Ogun and Kogi, both formerly loyal to the PDP.

Jonathan, 57, took the capital, Abuja, but 72-year-old Buhari won the state of Nigeria’s second biggest city, Kano, in the mainly Muslim north by an overwhelming margin: nearly two million votes against 215,779. This may well have put him on track for the presidency.