Jonathan wins Nigeria vote

Nigeria: Nigeria’s Goodluck Jonathan has been declared winner of presidential elections in a landmark vote that exposed regional tensions and led to deadly rioting in the mainly Muslim north.

Jonathan, the incumbent and first president from the southern oil-producing Niger Delta region, won 57 percent of the vote in Africa’s most populous nation, easily beating his northern rival, ex-military ruler Muhammadu Buhari.

Final results declared Monday evening, which the opposition rejected, gave Jonathan 22.5 million votes, while Buhari scored 12.2 million votes for 31 percent.

The president reached out to his opponents in a victory speech and called for national unity, while also saying that Africa’s largest oil producer had shown itself capable of holding fair polls.

“I congratulate the candidates of the other political parties,” he said. “I regard them not as opponents, but as partners.”

Jonathan mentioned by name the other main candidates in the race, including Buhari, saying he wanted to pay tribute to them.

Observers have hailed the conduct of the poll as a major step forward for a nation with a history of violent and deeply flawed elections.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague congratulated Jonathan and said the election “appears to be the most credible since the end of military rule in 1999”.

A group of local observers, Project 2011 Swift Count, said Monday night that the official results matched up closely with its sample of 1,441 polling units. It called the results an “accurate reflection of how Nigerians voted”.

But problems clearly remained, and concerns were raised over Jonathan’s extraordinarily high totals in certain states, including his native Bayelsa, where he took 99.63 percent.

The vote showed a country deeply divided between its predominately Christian south and economically marginalised north, where deadly riots broke out and eventually spread to some 14 states after results began to be released. Abuja, Tuesday, AFP