Nigerian Elections Lead the News

A head­line from Africanews.com fol­low­ing the Feb­ru­ary 23 pres­i­den­tial elec­tions in Nigeria

There has been plen­ty of news relat­ing to the African con­ti­nent over the last sev­er­al weeks but Saturday’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in Nige­ria is the one event that gar­nered the most headlines. 

The pres­i­den­tial elec­tions were held on Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 23 a week after it was delayed by the country’s Inde­pen­dent Nation­al Elec­tions Com­mis­sion (INEC).

The sto­ry eclipsed the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion which was held in Sene­gal just a day after on Feb­ru­ary 24, to the extent that not many peo­ple knew vot­ing was tak­ing place else­where in the continent. 

Explo­sions Heard Hours Before Vot­ing Began in Nigeria

The big head­line from Cable News Net­work (CNN) the day of the elec­tion was about explo­sions heard hours before vot­ing began in the coun­try. Accord­ing to CNN sources in Nige­ria, the explo­sions took place in the North­ern city of Maid­uguri hours before vot­ing start­ed. Also, accord­ing to CNN reports, sev­er­al peo­ple were killed in elec­tion-relat­ed vio­lence in the Riv­er State.

A Dis­put­ed Elec­tion in the Making

While the results are pend­ing many of the head­lines paint­ed a pic­ture of con­fu­sion result­ing from alle­ga­tions and accu­sa­tions of vot­er fraud from the country’s two main par­ties; rep­re­sent­ed by incum­bent Pres­i­dent Moham­madu Buhari and busi­ness­man Atiku Abubakar.

While pre­lim­i­nary results point­ed to a lead by Pres­i­dent Buhari’s All Pro­gres­sive Party(APP) a head­line from Africanewws.com stat­ed that the main oppo­si­tion People’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (PDP) is reject­ing the results.

The BBC Leads with Niger­ian Elec­tion Coverage

On its web­site, the British Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (BBC) pro­vid­ed com­pre­hen­sive cov­er­age of the elec­tions with live cov­er­age as well as a map that showed the results by each state.

In addi­tion, the BBC pro­vid­ed an analy­sis of Niger­ian pol­i­tics, includ­ing the his­to­ry of the coun­try and the many con­tra­dic­tions fac­ing the coun­try.  This analy­sis, for exam­ple, Five things about Nige­ria: The super­pow­er with no pow­er, is worth a read.