Nigeria chooses new president

Millions of Nigerians have ascended to the various voting stations across the country to perform their civic rights and choose the country’s leader for the next four years.

Earlier on Saturday, voting officially commenced across the 36 states and capital of Nigeria.

And after a long and demanding campaign season in Nigeria, the voices of candidates clamoring for votes will be echoing in the minds of many of these voters as they file out to make one of the most historic decisions as citizens.

They will be electing a president, 109 senators and 360 federal house of representative members and return in another 2 weeks to elect governors and state house of representative members.

Over 72 million eligible voters are faced with the difficulty of going through 91 political parties on the ballot papers to make their preferred choice of who leads them for another four years.

The race is clearly between President Muhammadu Buhari of the ruling All Progressives Congress and his main opponent and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party.

Both candidates have chosen their running mates from the south and will be hoping to garner enough votes from the electorates across the six geopolitical zones of the north and south regions.

With security guaranteed and hundreds of domestic and international election observers present to witness the historic moment, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) will be working hard to live up to its promise of delivering a free fair and credible election. – SABC Correspondent Phil Ihaza