ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Nigeria’s president was declared the clear winner of a second term in Africa’s largest democracy early Wednesday, after a campaign in which he urged voters to give him another chance to tackle gaping corruption, widespread insecurity and an economy limping back from a rare recession.
While many frustrated Nigerians had said they wanted to give someone new a try, President Muhammadu Buhari, a former military dictator, profited from his upright reputation in an oil-rich nation weary of politicians enriching themselves instead of the people.
Top opposition candidate Atiku Abubakar, a billionaire former vice president who made sweeping campaign promises to “make Nigeria work again,” quickly rejected the result of what he called a “sham election” and said he would challenge it in court.
Speaking shortly after the announcement of the official results and as many Nigerians awakened to the morning prayer, Buhari told colleagues that he was “deeply humbled” by the win. He also said he regretted the loss of dozens of lives in election-related violence.
“I will like to make a special appeal to my supporters not to gloat or humiliate the opposition. Victory is enough reward for your efforts,” Buhari said.
He pledged that his administration will intensify its efforts in security, economic restructuring and fighting corruption: “We will strive to strengthen our unity and inclusiveness so that no section or group will feel left behind or left out.”
Opposition candidate Abubakar, however, did not accept Buhari’s victory. In a statement shared by aides, Abubakar said he would have conceded “within seconds” if the vote had been free and fair. Instead he alleged “manifest and premeditated malpractices” in many of Nigeria’s 36 states.
He asserted that voting was suppressed in his strongholds in the south and that states where an extremist insurgency continues generated “much higher voter turnouts” than in peaceful ones. He objected to the deployment of the military in some areas.
Court challenges are nothing new in Nigeria, where Buhari himself doggedly fought his past election losses for months, in vain. The Supreme Court of Nigeria has never overturned a presidential election, Chris Kwaja, a senior adviser to the United States Institute of Peace, told The Associated Press.
The president’s colleagues had made clear they expected a challenge to this vote. “There’s no opposition that will roll over and play dead. Anybody that lost an election will always complain,” Hameed Ali, the ruling party agent attending the vote declaration, told reporters.
Buhari’s supporters began dancing in the streets of the capital, Abuja, on Tuesday night as vote counting stretched his lead from the weekend election to nearly 4 million votes over Abubakar.
“He is a man of integrity,” a Buhari supporter in the northern city of Kano, Mohammed Aliyu, said as jubilant people held up four fingers to mark the new term. “He is the only leader in Nigeria today that does not accumulate wealth, and that Is why the masses here are supporting him.”
Buhari received 15.1 million votes, or 55 percent, the electoral commission said in making its official declaration. Abubakar received 11.2 million, or 41 percent. The average national turnout was 35.6 percent, continuing a downward trend.
“The rigging was so obvious,” said one Abubakar supporter in Kano, John Orerere. But a civil rights activist, Musa Babn Iya, asserted that Nigerians were not interested in going to court but instead were thinking about “how to get out of this hardship” of simply getting by.
Buhari’s party on Tuesday rejected Abubakar’s earlier allegations of manipulation of the results. It called on Abubakar, who hasn’t made a public appearance since Saturday’s election, to accept his loss gracefully and concede. “Let this nation move forward,” campaign spokesman Babatunde Fashola told the AP in an interview.
The election, once described as too close to call, suffered from a surprise weeklong postponement and significant delays in the opening of polling stations. While election observers called the process generally peaceful, at least 53 people were killed in an attack claimed by the Islamic State West Africa Province extremist group and other violence, analysis unit SBM Intelligence said.
A former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, John Campbell, has said the troubled election gives the candidates grounds to go to the courts.
Many Nigerians have prayed for peace during the unexpectedly drawn-out election process. Some spoke approvingly of the 2015 vote, when President Goodluck Jonathan took the unprecedented step of conceding to Buhari before official results were announced. It was the first defeat of an incumbent president by the opposition in the country’s history.
Now Nigerians, who have been praised for their patience and resilience in this bumpy vote, are settling in for a legal fight.
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Anna reported from Kano, Nigeria. Associated Press writers Ismail Alfa Abdulrahim in Maiduguri, Nigeria and Sam Olukoya in Lagos, Nigeria and video journalist Desmond Tiro in Kano contributed.
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