Election officials in Nigeria counted ballots from polls in what they hope will be the nation’s first credible vote in nearly two decades.
Results starting to trickle in from Africa’s most populous nation, while in remote areas such as the northeastern state of Borno on the fringe of the Sahara, ballot papers were fetched by horse yesterday.
At a collation centre in Karo on the outskirts of Abuja, officials called out numbers as representatives noted down the figures.
Each of the country’s 120,000 polling units counted their results in front of voters as observers watched to see if those figures were properly recorded.
“Most of the numbers announced at polling booths are the same as those read out in the collation centres. Results so far are open, fair and justified,” said Chinedu Michael, an observer from the Nigerian Committee on the Defence of Human Rights in the commercial capital Lagos.
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