Results of Niger’s second round of presidential elections indicate that President Mahamadou Issoufou won his re-election with 92,5% of the votes against former Prime Minister and Parliament speaker Hama Amadou who gained 7,5%. According to Niger’s election commission, the voter turn-out was 59,8% while this figure is challenged by the opposition who claimed it would have been 11%. After the first round of presidential elections on 21 February which hosted 15 candidates, Issoufou had won 48,4% of the votes against 17,7% for Amadou, however during the second round, the opposition coalition COPA 2016 (Coalition for Alternation) called on Amadou supporters to boycott the run-off as it accused the government of fraud in the first round.

Amadou has been imprisoned since November on alleged baby trafficking charges and was furthermore flown to France for medical treatment just days before the second-round vote. According to some analysts, Issoufou has not engaged in vote rigging, indicated by the fact that one would not have expected him to fall short of the 50% mark in the first round in that case as it would have allowed him to win outright.

Immediately following the election results, President Issoufou had proposed forming a unity government, an offer repeated by Niger's Prime Minister in the talks with the opposition. The opposition has however turned down Issoufou’s offer of joining the government and now boycotts the legislature. When the new National Assembly was seated on 24 March, the 53 representatives of member parties of COPA 2016 refused to take up their seats in the 171-member legislative body.

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For more information on the oppossition boycott, click here.

For in-depth analyses on the election results by politics and security experts from independent international agencies, read the article by Presidential Power and the publication by the Global Observatory.