Violence is reported in the West African country, Ghana as the incumbent President Nana Akufo-Addo is pronounced winner of presidential election.
Akufo-Addo was re-elected with 51.59 percent of the vote, results from the election commission showed on Wednesday.
The results follow a contentious poll that President Akufo-Addo and his main challenger former President John Mahama had said they were leading based on their camps’ tallies.
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Five people were killed in election violence since Monday, police said, marring what observers said was a well-organised vote.
The Ghanaian Police Service said it recorded more than 60 incidents at Monday’s vote, in which President Akufo-Addo ran for re-election against his main rival, former President Mahama and 10 other candidates.
“Twenty-one of the incidents are true cases of electoral violence, six of which involve gunshots resulting in the death of five,” it said.
Independent observers this week congratulated Ghana for conducting largely peaceful polls, in line with its reputation as one of West Africa’s most stable democracies.
But tensions have risen as the camps of Mahama and Akufo-Addo said their tallies showed their candidate in the lead.
“There were issues on election day about the procedure of voting, then immediately after the voting there were complaints about the way the result were being sorted out,” Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris, reporting from the capital Accra, said.
“What we are hearing right now is that in the city of Tamale there has been protests going on by the opposition party claiming there were some irregularities and attempts to subvert with the will of people.
“We understand there has been an incident at the headquarters of the electoral commission, and we have seen in the last few minutes or so that the military police and other paramilitary organisations are ensuring that there is no breakdown of law and order.”
Mahama and Akufo-Addo, 76, are old rivals who have faced off at the ballot box twice before.
Mahama was president for four years until 2016 before being succeeded by Akufo-Addo.
Both of those elections were determined by small margins.
Akufo Addo has promised to implement a $17bn programme to boost Ghana’s economy after the coronavirus pandemic hit the price of key oil and cocoa exports, resulting in the first quarterly contraction in nearly 40 years.
He will be under pressure to rein in government spending that has pushed the debt-to-GDP ratio past 70 percent and prompted warnings from the International Monetary Fund.
