Presidential election-Nigeria - Though Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan has taken a slim lead in early results of Saturday's presidential election, the strong showing by his main challenger, former military head of state Muhammadu Buhari of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), has made the race a close one. Jonathan, a Christian from the South and the first-ever President from the country's ethnic minority, has swept the poll in the largely-Christian South, at the expense of Buhari and the two other main candidates, Nuhu Ribadu of the Action Congress of  Nigeria (ACN) and Ibrahim Shekarau of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), according to some of the results so far released. A pleasant surprise for the President, who is the candidate of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), is his victory in the South-west, which is the stronghold of the main opposition ACN. Jonathan has so far out-performed the ACN candidate in the region.

But political analysts caution that it is still too early for the President's camp to celebrate, as Buhari, a Northern Muslim, has also won several states in the predominantly-Muslim and vote-rich North.

To win the presidential contest, a candidate must score 25 per cent of the votes cast in at least two-thirds of the country's 36 states, in addition to winning a simple majority.

That means a massive victory in the North for Buhari could well send the election into a run-off, where all a candidate requires to win will be a simple majority.

Nigerians are generally feeling good on Sunday, after local and international observers declared the presidential poll, the second in a three-phase general elections due to end 26 April with regional poll, free and fair.

Such an electoral success is a rare feat in a country with a long history of rigged and violent polls.

The presidential poll was also considered to be a great improvement over the 9 April National Assembly (parliamentary) election, even though a few instances of violence were recorded, including two explosions in northern Maiduguri and the shooting dead of a woman in the northern city of Jos by a security agent.

Though the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said the results would be released within 48 hours, the delay in announcing the outcome of the parliamentary poll could mean that the final presidential poll results could take days.

Pana 17/04/2011