Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou has failed to secure an outright majority in Sunday’s elections, taking the contest into a second round.<\/p>\n
Mr Issoufou took 48% of the vote, with jailed opposition leader Hama Amadou on 18%, official preliminary results say.<\/p>\n
The run-off vote between the two candidates is scheduled for 20 March.<\/p>\n
Mr Amadou is currently behind bars accused of trafficking babies, a charge he strongly denies.<\/p>\n
President Issoufou is running for a second term.<\/p>\n
The run-up to the vote was marred by accusations of repression and a row over identification documents.<\/p>\n
The authorities announced that roughly 1.5 million people without ID papers would be able to cast their ballots by having witnesses vouch for them, in a move that was condemned by opposition leaders.<\/p>\n
Niger is rich in natural resources, including uranium and oil, but is one of the poorest countries on Earth, ranking last in the UN Human Development Index.<\/p>\n
Niger is seen as an important ally of Western powers in the fight against militant Islamists in the fragile Sahara region.<\/p>\n
However, the country is far from stable. Corruption, food shortages and porous borders remain serious problems.<\/p>\n
–
\nBy: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou has failed to secure an outright majority in Sunday’s elections, taking the contest into a second round. Mr Issoufou took 48% of the vote, with jailed opposition leader Hama Amadou on 18%, official preliminary results say. The run-off vote between the two candidates is scheduled for 20 March. Mr Amadou is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=193812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193812\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=193812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=193812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=193812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}