Nigeria Content Online

Ivory Coast
presidential challenger, Alassane Ouattara, defeated Laurent Gbagbo in
a run-off poll, the electoral commission said on Thursday, but Gbagbo
immediately challenged the result.

Ouattara said he
planned a national unity government after the chairman of the West
African country’s electoral commission said he had won 54.1 percent of
the vote.

Gbagbo’s party has
already said it will dispute the provisional results, which were
announced after an official deadline ran out on Wednesday, and an aide
told Reuters on Thursday the result was “not legally valid.”

The U.S. ambassador
to the United Nations, Susan Rice, said the U.N. Security Council was
ready to take “appropriate measures” against anyone obstructing the
electoral process in Ivory Coast.

After repeated
delays, national election commission chairman, Youssouf Bakayoko,
surprised reporters by walking into the UN-guarded hotel in Abidjan
where Ouattara has made his base and reading off the results, which
made Gbagbo the loser with 45.9 percent.

“The electoral
commission has, in accordance with the law, handed over to the
Constitutional Council, the results it has received and validated,
accompanied by the result sheets,” Bakayoko told reporters, adding vote
turnout was 81.09 percent.

Cheers erupted from
Ouattara supporters gathered at the hotel, which has been placed under
UN guard with a handful of armoured personnel carriers outside.

An earlier attempt
by the election body to publish the results on Tuesday night failed
when pro-Gbagbo members of the commission ripped up the sheet of
tallies, as a spokesman was trying to read them to a news conference.

The provisional
results will now go for study by Ivory Coast’s top legal body, the
Constitutional Council, which is presided over by a Paul Yao N’Dre, a
staunch Gbagbo ally.

The vote, delayed
for five years, was meant to reunite the country split in two after a
2002-2003 war, but has instead exposed existing north-south divisions
that have exploded into outbreaks of violence.

Security forces
shot dead at least four people at a Ouattara party office in an Abidjan
suburb overnight, while members of Gbagbo’s party said they had been
attacked at their residence in the same suburb by Ouattara’s militants,
leaving some wounded.

The election
commission failed to meet a Wednesday deadline to publish provisional
results, despite concerted international pressure for them to do so.

Gbagbo’s party has
already urged the Constitutional Council to cancel the results in the
rebel-held north, where Ouattara did well in the first round, alleging
intimidation by rebels.

“We have the
competence to judge results of the presidential election, which means
we can invalidate results in certain voting bureaux where there were
problems, permitting us not to count their votes,” said Paul Tayoro,
the council’s spokesman.

UN Secretary
General, Ban Ki-moon, said the world body “would safeguard the
electoral process so that the will of the Ivorian people, as expressed
in the election, will be respected.”