Voting has officially closed in Kenya’s general elections as outgoing President Uhuru Kenyatta prepares to hand over power to a new leader.
The polls were officially opened from 6am to end 5pm, but extended in places where voting started late due to logistical delays and identification kit failure.
- Presidency, NUPRC fracas puts $1.28bn Seplat, ExxonMobil deal in limbo
- How fake doctor defrauded 25 POS operators in Ekiti
The country’s population is 53 million, with more than 22 million registered voters.
The country’s electoral body (IEBC) is yet to announce the total turnout, but before polls closed, just over 56 percent of the 22 million registered voters had cast their votes, according to Aljazeera.
The counting of ballots started after the election closed with the collation of the presidential votes a priority.
Later, it would be sent to the constituency-wide tallying centre which tracks the results from all reporting polling stations, and the winner will be announce within one week.
If no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the votes, the election will go into a run-off for the first time in Kenyan history.
A report by the BBC said that the veteran opposition leader, Raila Odinga, was mobbed by supporters when he went to vote in Kibra, one of his strongholds in the capital, Nairobi.
He did not speak to the press, but his wife, Ida Odinga, said he was “upbeat about the election”.
When Ruto voted in the town of Eldoret in the Rift Valley, he pledged to accept the election result.
“I think for the first time in the history of multi-party democracy in Kenya, all the candidates have undertaken that they will accept the outcome of the results,” he told the BBC.
The election is a race between four candidates, but the forerunners are the veteran opposition leader, Raila Odinga 77 and the incumbent Deputy President William Ruto 55.