Benin was voting for a new president on Sunday, with Finance Minister Romuald Wadagni a shoo-in after overseeing a decade of economic growth in the West African country despite jihadist attacks in the north.<\/p>\n
Nearly eight million voters are eligible to cast ballots to choose a successor to Patrice Talon, who is stepping down after two five-year terms and has endorsed Wadagni as his successor.<\/p>\n
Turnout will be a crucial factor after a lacklustre campaign hit by voter apathy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe must vote to ensure a high turnout,\u201d said Yvan Glidja, a man in his 30s who turned up early at a school-turned-polling station in the commercial capital Cotonou to vote for Wadagni.<\/p>\n
Backed by the two main ruling parties, Wadagni is being challenged by Paul Hounkpe, an opposition figure whose campaign has been very low-key and who needed help from majority lawmakers to secure the required parliamentary endorsements to get on the ballot.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere cannot be any real enthusiasm; for that, you would need debate and each side would have to believe in its chances,\u201d said Rufin Godjo, a political analyst.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Benin was voting for a new president on Sunday, with Finance Minister Romuald Wadagni a shoo-in after overseeing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[63,8603,28878,654,1153,94529,5817,3905,94528,13436,7918,2931,8534,94530,8533,94527],"class_list":{"0":"post-183939","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-africa","8":"tag-africa","9":"tag-african-union","10":"tag-al-qaeda","11":"tag-benin","12":"tag-burkina-faso","13":"tag-cotonou","14":"tag-ecowas","15":"tag-european-union","16":"tag-group-for-the-support-of-islam-and-muslims","17":"tag-jnim","18":"tag-nana-akufo-addo","19":"tag-niger","20":"tag-patrice-talon","21":"tag-paul-hounkpe","22":"tag-romuald-wadagni","23":"tag-the-democrats"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@africa\/116391326674180081","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}