Nigeria's opposition Labour Party wins Lagos stronghold of ruling party

By Olanrewaju Kola and Ibrahim Garba Shuaibu

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (AA) - In Nigeria's presidential poll, the opposition Labour Party has won Lagos state, a stronghold of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) party, election authorities announced Monday.

The Labour presidential candidate, Peter Obi, scored 582,454 votes, ahead of Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the APC who got 577,606, said the Independent National Electoral Commission’s Adenike Oladiji.

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) came in third in the country's commercial hub, the official said. No winner is expected before Tuesday at the earliest.

Obi's surprise lead has been attributed to the strength of the youth vote and support from his kinsmen.

"Lagos is a cosmopolitan state with a mix of different people. The unpopular policies of the ruling APC government and voting from the Igbos, Obi's kinsmen, gave him the lead," Segun Adeoye, a Lagos resident, told Anadolu.

At 61, Obi is the youngest in the three-way contest in the Feb. 25 presidential election.

The former two-time governor of Anambra, a state in southeastern Nigeria, had been polling strongly in the runup to the general elections, with some surveys projecting him as the winner.

But he also has a hurdle of a clear win in 25 of the 36 states of the federation in fulfillment of the country's electoral law.

The ruling party has also lost the large voting population in the Kano, Katsina and Osun states.

- 3 main contenders

More than 93 million people were registered to vote for a successor to President Muhammadu Buhari and lawmakers for both the House of Representatives and Senate.

The race for president has narrowed down to three serious contenders: veteran politicians Tinubu and Atiku Abubakar, and new challenger Obi.

Tinubu, 70, is from Buhari’s ruling APC and previously served as a senator and governor of Lagos.

Abubakar, a 76-year-old businessman who was Nigeria’s vice-president from 1999 to 2007, is the candidate for the main opposition PDP, his record sixth shot at the top office.

Saturday’s voting, though marked by delays, was largely peaceful.

There were, however, reports of sporadic violence, with at least two people killed in an attack on an election office of a New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) candidate.

In Lagos, police said unidentified people armed with knives and sticks attacked polling stations and officials.

Accusations by the opposition also followed results in some states which gave the ruling party an early lead. They called for the cancelation of some polls, citing election violence,

For most Nigerians, whoever succeeds Buhari has to tackle the protracted security crisis, economic woes, youth unemployment, and dissatisfaction, and an overall sense of untapped potential in Africa’s most populous country, and one of its most influential.