Buhari re-elected as Nigerian president, Atiku vows legal challenge
ABUJA - President Muhammadu Buhari has won a second term in Nigeria, the election board said on Wednesday, but his main rival planned a fraud challenge after a vote marred by delays, logistical glitches and scores of deaths.
The incumbent has a daunting to-do list, including reviving an economy still struggling to recover from a 2016 recession and quelling a decade-old Islamist insurgency that has killed thousands in the northeast, many of them civilians. While Buhari urged supporters not to gloat or “humiliate” the opposition, Atiku said the election was rigged.“It is clear that there were manifest and premeditated malpractices in many states which negate the results announced,” he said. “I hereby reject the result of the February 23, 2019, sham election and will be challenging it in court.”
But the controversy could just peter out, as happened recently after a presidential vote in Democratic Republic of Congo. “A legal challenge is very unlikely to overturn the official result,” said John Ashbourne, senior emerging markets economist at Capital Economics in London, of the Nigerian election.The candidate with the most votes nationwide is declared the winner as long as they have at least one quarter of the vote in two-thirds of Nigeria’s 36 states and the capital, Abuja.
Atiku, 72, had said he would aim to double the size of the economy to $900 billion by 2025, privatize the state oil company and expand the role of the private sector. At least 47 people were killed during voting and afterwards, according to the Situation Room, a monitoring organization linking various civil society groups.
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