Incumbent Niger President Mamadou Tandja is leading in the country’s presidential elections, national radio said on Friday.
”Provisional overall results will be known today [Friday] … with the answer to the question whether there will be a second round,” the radio said.
Tandja has repeatedly said he hopes to be elected in the first round, drawing angry reactions from the opposition, which accuses him of rigging the vote.
”Results registered up to last night put the candidate of the [ruling National Movement for Society and Development] MNSD, Mamadou Tandja, in the lead, followed by the candidate of the [opposition Niger Party for Democracy and Socialism] PNDS, Mahamadou Issoufou,” the radio said.
In third position came parliamentary Speaker Mahamane Ousmane, of the Democratic and Social Convention, it said.
The electoral commission, which is overseeing the vote-counting process, suspended its work at about 1.30am local time.
National radio said the process had resumed on Friday morning and that only three of the 92 electoral districts remained to be counted.
The campaign manager for Amadou Cheiffou, one of six candidates in the presidential race, said on Friday there is ”no doubt” the election will go to a second round.
Laoul Chaffani said Cheiffou’s party, the Social-Democratic Rally, will join forces with Tandja’s MNSD party in a second round.
The Nigerian Alliance for Democracy and Development (ANDP), whose candidate is Adamou Moumouni Djermakoye, has already announced it will back the incumbent in a run-off.
The second round will be held on December 4, at the same time as legislative elections in the country.
Five million people were called on Tuesday to elect the president of the largely desert nation, where two-thirds of its more than 11-million people survive on less than $1 a day.
Education and jobs creation were major concerns in the run-up to the vote, as just one-third of Niger’s children are in primary school and the unemployment rate is mushrooming.
Sidelined by the slump in the 1980s in the price of uranium, of which it is the world’s third-largest producer, Niger is banking on oil exploration to help lift its economy and pay off its debt, estimated at $1,8-billion by the World Bank in 2003. — Sapa-AFP