Nigeria’s opposition leader is to mount a legal challenge after President Muhammadu Buhari secured a second term in an election marked both by apathy and violence that claimed hundreds of lives. The electoral commission officially declared Mr Buhari the victor of Saturday’s poll, saying he had won 56 percent of the vote, against 41 percent secured by his main challenger, Atiku Abubakar. But Mr Abubakar insisted he had been cheated of the chance to lead Africa’s most populous state after a conspiracy between the commission and the president’s ruling party. “It is clear that there were manifest and premeditated malpractices in many states which negate the results announced,” Mr Abubakar, a former vice president, said as he announced that he would file a legal petition to overturn the vote. Mr Buhari, a former military dictator who returned to office as a civilian in 2015, insisted that the election was “free and fair”, claiming the vote was “another milestone in Nigeria’s democratic deve...
