{"id":23552,"date":"2016-02-28T02:33:41","date_gmt":"2016-02-28T02:33:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/niger-poll-to-go-into-second-round\/"},"modified":"2016-02-28T02:33:30","modified_gmt":"2016-02-28T02:33:30","slug":"niger-poll-to-go-into-second-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/niger-poll-to-go-into-second-round\/","title":{"rendered":"Niger poll to go into second round"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Niger\u2019s President Mahamadou Issoufou took a solid lead in the uranium-rich nation\u2019s presidential poll but will face a run-off against jailed opposition leader Hama Amadou on March 20.<br \/>\n}<\/p>\n<p>The narrow win for Issoufou, who is known as \u201cZaki\u201d or \u201cLion\u201d in Hausa, came after he had vowed to secure a victory in the first round.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was set on winning the first round, but God has decided otherwise,\u201d Issoufou said. \u201cGod\u2019s choice is always best.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The CENI election commission said Issoufou won 48.4 per cent of the February 21 vote \u2014 a tantalising 167,000 votes short of the knock-out victory he had sought \u2014 with his nearest challenger Amadou picking up 17.4 per cent.<\/p>\n<p>His ruling coalition won a resounding majority in the National Assembly, taking more than 90 of the 171 seats, including 75 for his own PNDS party.<\/p>\n<p>Issoufou defended the results as impressive and unprecedented and said a wave of pink \u2014 the colour of his party \u2014 had covered every region of the country.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe people have made their decision calmly and in complete transparency,\u201d added Issoufou, who campaigned on pledges to boost the economy and keep the country safe from jihadists.<\/p>\n<p>The president\u2019s rivals had pledged to unite behind whoever scored highest among them to challenge the 63-year-old\u2019s bid for a second five-year term.<\/p>\n<p>Amadou campaigned from behind bars after being arrested over his alleged role in baby-trafficking.<\/p>\n<p>Former PM Seini Oumarou and ex-president Mahamane Ousmane, won 12.11 per cent and 6.25 per cent respectively.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-10650 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/issoufou.jpg\" alt=\"President Mahamadou Issoufou in Niamey on Friday. He won the presidential election by 48 per cent.\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Niger\u2019s President Mahamadou Issoufou took a solid lead in the uranium-rich nation\u2019s presidential poll but will face a run-off against jailed opposition leader Hama Amadou on March 20. } The narrow win for Issoufou, who is known as \u201cZaki\u201d or \u201cLion\u201d in Hausa, came after he had vowed to secure a victory in the first [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[100],"byline":[2461],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-23552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-africa","byline-daily-nation"],"bylines":[{"id":2461,"name":"Daily Nation","slug":"daily-nation","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2461,"name":"Daily Nation","slug":"daily-nation","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23552"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=23552"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=23552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}