Nigeria presidential election results face delays Another 18 states still have to send results to the counting centre in Abuja, electoral commissioner
Attahiru Jega announced. He said the count resumes
at 10am local time on Tuesday.
However, the overall result was still too early to forecast, with Mr Jonathan recording similarly spectacular victories in his own southern Christian
strongholds. He won 95 per cent of the vote in his native Rivers state, home of much of Nigeria's oil and
gas industry. The US and Britain warned of "disturbing indications" that the tally could be subject to political
interference. The weekend vote was marred by technical glitches, arguments, occasional violence and the banning of foreign journalists from covering the
elections , but in many places proved to be less chaotic than previous elections in Africa's biggest economy and top oil producer. A Nigerian woman validates her voting card using a fingerprint reader prior to casting her vote in Daura (AP) At least 15 people were shot dead on polling day, most of them in the northeast where the Islamist insurgent group Boko Haram has declared war on democracy in its fight to revive a medieval caliphate In the sands of the southern Sahara. The United States and Britain said that after the vote there were worrying signs of political interference in the centralised tallying of the results, although they said it did not appear to be "systemic" in favour of one side or another. "So far, we have seen no evidence of systemic manipulation of the process," US Secretary of State John Kerry and British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said in a joint statement. "But there are disturbing indications that the collation process – where the votes are finally counted – may be subject to deliberate political interference," they added. The US-UK statement will heighten fears that what has already been a very close election could end in violence if the result is disputed by either side. Both
Mr Jonathan and Mr Buhari have signed a pledge promising to respect any final result. But many fear a
repeat of the bloodshed that followed the two men's previous electoral joust in 2011, when around 800 people were killed in street violence. Mr Buhari, 72, who ruled with an iron fist in the 1980s, is challenging Mr Jonathan over his record on clamping down on corruption and on dealing with the Boko Haram insurgents who kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls from northern Nigeria last year.
