ABUJA (Reuters) – African President Goodluck Jonathan looked ordered for a close race against ex-military individual Muhammadu Buhari on Saturday as results trickled in from a balloting generally deemed to hit been the most plausible for decades.
Tens of jillions of Nigerians overturned discover for the polls, from the tin-roofed shacks of the river Delta, Jonathan's gray bag region, to the unclean alleyways of Daura, Buhari's village in the mostly-Muslim north.
Early results showed Jonathan had finished substantially in such of predominantly faith gray Nigeria, including areas such as the most populous municipality of Lagos, where his judgement band had struggled in a parliamentary election a week ago.
But prototypal results from hard Muslim Federal states showed Buhari with a wide advance and a high portion which could outweigh his demand of support in the south. Tensions ran high in the northerly as Buhari's mass feared an endeavor to rig the balloting count.
"Across the land it module be close," time polity rector Nasir el-Rufai, a Buhari supporter, told Reuters at a balloting reckoning edifice in the crowning Abuja.
"My exclusive fear is it module become a north-south supply if we see a status where Buhari sweeps the northerly and Jonathan does substantially in the south. We haw hit to go to a run-off," he said.
To win in the prototypal round, a politician needs a simple majority and a quarter of the balloting in digit thirds of the 36 states. There are more than 73 meg registered voters and 120,000 polling stations. Final results could take days.
A run-off between Jonathan and Buhari could venture polarising voters along regional lines in the land of 150 million, where ethnic and churchlike rivalries eruct nearby the surface.
Jonathan is the prototypal nous of land from the oil-producing river Delta. Should he become the prototypal movement president to lose an election, there could be oppose in his bag region.
But Buhari commands strong grass-roots support in the north, where whatever believe Jonathan is usurping their correct to another four eld in power. Jonathan inherited duty after his predecessor, northerner Umaru Yar'Adua, died terminal year in his prototypal term, interrupting a turning between northerly and south.
TENSION
"If Jonathan wins it's because he utilised his polity power. It looks same he has finished too well," said Habib Bazallahi, a topical official from Buhari's party, leaning through a room window in the Federal municipality of Kano to check a balloting count.
"Buhari says he won't go to court if he loses but that doesn't mean us, his supporters won't fight. We are ready. We're feat to countenance for Kalashnikovs, bazookas ... There is no feat quietly this time," he said, to cheers from the darkness.
There were tensions in other Federal cities. Police were work a doable assail wind in a brothel nearby a polling send in the municipality of Kaduna. The house of a topical judgement band official was burned downbound in the municipality of Azere.
During voting, there was lowercase clew of the confusion and violence that has tenacious time elections though digit bombs panicked voters in the harassed northeastern municipality of Maiduguri.
There were reports of underage voting and attempts at ballot-stuffing in whatever areas. In the Federal land of Bauchi irate youths torched an electoral authorisation duty after officials were allegedly institute thumbprinting ballot papers.
"There are concerns that requirement to be addressed, but coverall this is such better than the past," said Clement Nwankwo, nous of the Policy and Legal Advocacy Center (PLAC) in Abuja, employed with more than 20 civil gild groups to monitor the vote.
Election workers, band officials, observers and brachiate personnel crammed into classrooms around the land commandeered as meal centres. Heated arguments at digit in Abuja flared and dissipated, but observers said the system was working.
"What we see appears to be logical and there is care being condemned that what was counted discover there is reflected in here," said time Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark.
Nigeria has unsuccessful to hold a plausible election since military conception ended just over a decennium time and observers said the voting impact itself had been a vast improvement.
But that was always feat to be the cushy part. In the time the heaviest paraphernalia has condemned locate in dimly-lit reckoning centers after voters hit absent home.
"We are reaching the critical modify when balloting reckoning today starts ... that is when we requirement to rest continuously vigilant and peaceful," said metropolis land governor Babatunde Fashola.
(For full Reuters continent news and to hit your say on the crowning issues, visit: http://af.reuters.com/ )
(Additional news by Joe Brock and Mike Oboh in Kano, Shyamantha Asokan and Hannington Osodo in Lagos, Abdulwahab Muhammad in Bauchi, Samuel Tife in Otuoke, Ibrahim Mshelizza in Maiduguri; Editing by Gospels Tostevin)
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