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The main Nigerian presidential candidates will vote in two key cities on Saturday as the election campaign reaches its peak with a week to go before the polls.
The Lagos shopping center in the south-west of the country is expected to stop while President Muhammadu Buhari visits a rally in front of tens of thousands of supporters.
Its main rival, Atiku Abubakar, is also organizing a "mega-gathering" in the capital, Abuja.
Both events are among the final stages of the election campaign around the 36 states of Nigeria and the federal capital territory, before the vote begins next Saturday.
Buhari, 76, wants a second four-year term, while 72-year-old Abubakar is finally hoping to win the presidency after four previous attempts.
A record number of 84,004,084 voters are registered this year, an increase of 18% over 2015, when Buhari became the first opposition candidate in Nigeria to overthrow a president.
Buhari, of the All Progressive Congress (APC) party, won just under 54 percent of the vote, beating Goodluck Jonathan of the Democratic People's Party (PDP) with 2.6 million votes.
Elections are the sixth to be held since Nigeria returned to civilian rule in 1999 after decades of military rule.
The election authorities gave no details on when the official results would be announced, but in the 2015 election, the first figures were published 48 hours after the polls closed, even though the ballot began a second day.
The APC is optimistic about Buhari's chances of re-election.
But many predict a tighter race because of unsatisfied insecurity, claims of a unilateral fight against corruption and the recessionary exit from the oil-dependent economy .
"People are tired after four years at the head of Buhari and even if he is the outgoing president, the election outcome is very uncertain," said Cheta Nwanze, an badyst at SBM Intelligence.
Two key factors that played a major role in the previous votes – ethnicity and religion – were removed, with Buhari and Abubakar both being Hausa Muslims.
"Buhari is positioning itself as a statist, a pro-big government, where the government should have the essential, while Abubakar is positioning itself as a pro-business and pro-private enterprise," said Nwanze.
"It's unique in our history – we've never had that before."
Tanko Yakasai, a senior politician, said the focus on policies and programs could be a "good start for Nigerian politics", as younger, more ideological politicians emerge.
In all, 73 candidates are running for president of the most populous country in Africa, including seven women.
The legislative elections will be held simultaneously, with 6,483 candidates for 109 seats in the Senate and 360 in the House of Representatives.
A second round of voting takes place on March 2 to elect new governors in 29 states and new members of state bademblies.
In 2015, the vote was delayed six weeks due to military action against Boko Haram and the government again cautioned that possible attempts to disrupt the poll.
But the chairman of the National Independent Electoral Commission (INEC), Mahmood Yakubu, said that he saw "no reason" to differ.
"We are ready to go," he told Channel TV on February 6.
Nevertheless, electoral logistics can prove to be a headache.
Some 1.8 million people in three states in the north-east of the country are still homeless due to violence in Boko Haram, which has killed more than 27,000 people since 2009.
In Borno, the most affected state, the INEC has set up 10 special voting centers allowing more than 400,000 displaced people to vote.
Similar problems are likely to occur in some central states where violence has resumed in a long-standing battle for resources between nomadic pastoralists and farmers.
An increase in kidnappings for ransom and cattle rustling in some parts of the north could also complicate voting in this region.
Previous Nigerian elections have been tainted by fraud and the two main parties have been accused of attempting to rig the results by buying the biometric identity cards necessary for voting.
Buhari has also been the subject of allegations of executive power interference in the judicial system after suspending Nigeria's highest judge, accused of breaking the rules of wealth declaration.
The Chief Justice is the President of the Supreme Court who would hear any legal challenge to the result. Former military leader Buhari disputed the results in 2007 and 2011 – and lost.
In 2015, the international interest in Nigeria's elections was high due to the threat of Boko Haram and the abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls from Chibok City, Borno.
It is also worth noting Jonathan's willingness to accept defeat and a peaceful transition, which has raised hopes of setting a precedent in Africa.
But the more general general interest has been comparatively moderate this year, notably due to a more country-centric US administration and the imminent exit of Britain from the European Union.
Neither Buhari nor Abubakar gave categorical badurance that they would concede defeat in the same way that Jonathan did in 2015.
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