Ghana’s President John Mahama has said that he will respect the outcome of the tightly contested election.
He also said in a tweet that the Electoral Commission should be allowed to carry out its mandate.
Local media are reporting that main opposition candidate Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, 72, has an unassailable lead.
Final results are expected before the end of the day.
The electoral commission announced Thursday that it was manually verifying the results because its electronic system had been targeted by hackers.
In a tweet, it urged people to ignore the “fake results” circulating on social media.
The ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) candidate’s quest for a second term is facing a strong challenge from a revitalised New Patriotic Party (NPP).
A run-off will be held later in the month if neither of the two main candidates secures more than 50% of the votes.
The campaign was dominated by Ghana’s faltering economy.
In the previous election in 2012, Mr Mahama defeated Mr Akufo-Addo by less than 300,000 votes.
Head-to-head:
NDC candidate: John Dramani Mahama, 58
- Vice-president under President John Atta Mills, who died in 2012. Completed his term
- Now seeking re-election after serving his first term of four years
- Main promise: Launch more infrastructure projects and create jobs
NPP candidate: Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, 72
- Campaigned for a return to multi-party democracy under military rule
- A former justice and foreign minister in the NPP government from 2001 to 2007, he is running for president for a third time
- Main promise: Build a factory in each of Ghana’s more than 200 districts
Defeat for Mr Mahama would make him the first incumbent to lose an election since Ghana returned to multi-party democracy in 1992.
He has been nicknamed “Mr Dumsor”, a local word that refers to the power cuts that have blighted the country during his term, but on the campaign trial has been trying to convince Ghanaians that he is delivering on his promise of creating more jobs.
Mr Akufo-Addo has promised free high-school education and more factories, but his critics have questioned the viability of his ambitions.
The other four candidates include former first lady Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings of the National Democratic Party (NDP), whose husband Jerry John Rawlings initially took power in the 1979 coup.
She is the first woman to run for president in the West African country.
BBC
