Today (Sunday) Nigeria recorded significant delays in the voting process in the country's presidential elections, when more than 93 million citizens with the right to vote went to the polls throughout the vast federation, the second largest country in terms of population on the African continent, and the most populated country south of the Sahara.
In at least five countries, unusual events were recorded in the voting in which polling stations were missed, failures in the envelope counting machines, as well as an actual armed attack on established voting stations.
In some places in the country, the poll workers simply did not come to work, which caused delays during voting hours, long queues, and in many places the voting was extended for another day.
Nigeria: Citizens mobilized to cook dinner for poll workers in order to support the election process
Along with the significant disruptions to the voting process, in most polling stations there was an orderly vote and high voting rates, especially among the young people in the country, those who grew up after the fall of the military regime in the country in 1999 and show greater confidence in the democratic system.
There are 18 candidates participating in the presidential elections, but only three of them were marked by the polls in the country as leading candidates and the race between the three is very close.
In fact, this is the closest election the country has known since the last democratic period in Nigeria began in 2000. The candidate of the ruling party "Congress of All Progressives", Bola Tinubu, is considered to be the successor of the outgoing president, Muhammadu Buhari, who has completed his second term and according to the Nigerian constitution is prevented from running again .
A policeman secures a vote counting arena in Nigeria,
The leader of the second largest opposition party, the People's Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, to one of the most powerful figures in the country's southwestern states, which are rich in oil but plagued by natural disasters and corruption.
Abubakar was previously accused of corruption but never stood trial and at the age of 76 he is running for the presidency for the sixth time.
The election campaign between the two well-known and aging candidates received a boost in the form of a young and energetic candidate from a party that is considered relatively small and marginal in the country's political life.
Peter Obi, from the Labor Party which is very little represented in the country, has become a veritable idol for an army of young people on social media who promote him with fervor and rhetoric bordering on populism.
The candidate of the Labor Party for the presidency of Nigeria, Peter Obi,
Obi, 61 years old, is considered young and secretly modern and enjoys great support in the country's urban strongholds among the younger and more educated population.
A businessman and millionaire, Obi is considered to support a public policy of welfare alongside fiscal responsibility and focuses mainly on economic and social issues in his election campaign.
Nigeria has suffered in the past year from an unprecedented economic crisis.
The local currency has plunged at a time when the prices of goods around the world are rising, especially food and fuel needed by the millions of people throughout the country.
Nigeria, which is rich in oil and natural gas, suffers from crumbling infrastructure, the lack of personal security and a continuous wave of terrorism in the northeast of the country.
For a country with a problematic rule of law, a huge population and separatist districts that aspire to break away from the rule of the capital Abuja, holding a democratic election on a huge scale, with a computerized vote counting system, is a huge challenge.
Great public involvement, Peter Obi's supporters in Nigeria,
But alongside the many malfunctions that plagued the voting process, thousands of cases of exciting civil mobilization were also recorded.
In the suburbs of the city of Lagos, the economic capital of the country, the residents of one of the constituencies mobilized to cook dinner for the employees of the local election committee, so that they would stay at the polling station and finish updating the results in the computerized system at the various polling stations in the district.
In other places, citizens came to protect the polling sites and the election commission facilities.
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