Togolese are anxiously waiting for the provisional results of the February 22 presidential election to find the new president-elect of the country who will lead for the next five years.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) of Togo said that it will release provisional results on Monday February 24, 2020.

It expects to declare the final results from all 9,376 voting centres within a week after the Constitutional Court validates the results.

Seven persons including the incumbent President Faure Gnassingbe of the Union for the Republic (UNIR), Mr Jean-Pierre Fabre of the National Alliance for Change (ANC), and Dr Agbeyome Kodjo of Patriotic Movement for Democracy and Development (MPDD), are in the race.

According to the Ghana News Agency (GNA), in parts of Lome, the country’s capital, the counting of ballots ended around 6pm at various polling stations after the polls, which started at 7am and ended at 4pm.

Some voters who were at various centres told GNA that they were monitoring the counting process of the election closely, hoping that results are not tampered with or changed.

An entrepreneur, Michael Gbogbo, said: “We appreciate the electoral reforms we’ve witnessed this year including leaving our borders open but the most important thing is that the CENI should give us the results as they are, they should not engage in any electoral fraud as in the past.”

“The results are speaking volumes and we expect our authorities to respect the decision of the Togolese people and allow the one we have chosen to be our president.”

Shortly after the polls, there were reports that security forces had sealed off the home of Dr Agbeyome Kodjo, one of the candidates in the presidential race, but the security responded that it did so to protect the opposition candidate.

The February 22 presidential election would be the first presidential polls after constitutional changes occasioned by anti-government protests in 2017.

It will require a 50 percent plus majority for a winner to emerge as a president-elect.

Should this fail to happen, a run-off between the two top candidates would be held in some weeks.