By Tim Cocks and Seun Sanni
LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigeria's ex-military ruler Muhammadu Buhari took what looked to be an unassailable lead on Thursday in a vote to chose the main opposition candidate for next year's presidential election.
Some 8,000 delegates were entitled to vote in the primary for the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) ticket and an initial count suggested Buhari had taken 3,430 votes -- almost certainly well ahead of his four rivals.
The governor of the northern Kano State, Rabiu Kwankwaso, got 974 votes, while former vice president Atiku Abubakar secured 954 ballots. The scores for the two other candidates were still being tallied.
The winner will face President Goodluck Jonathan in an election scheduled for February 2015, which is expected to be the closest fought since the end of military rule in 1999.
Jonathan won the ruling party ticket on Thursday, with no challenger stepping forward from the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) to oppose him.
Buhari enjoys wide grassroots support, especially in the largely Muslim north, which has felt disenfranchised as power shifts to the more prosperous majority Christian south.
Himself a Muslim, Buhari took power in a coup in 1983. He is remembered as an iron-fisted ruler who executed armed robbers and drug traffickers, before losing power himself in a 1985 putsch. He is also seen as one of few Nigerian leaders who never used the top job to enrich himself or his supporters.
Jonathan's administration has been dogged by corruption scandals in the oil sector, some of which it has promised to investigate and others it denied, although it is hardly the first Nigerian government to be tainted with graft.
"We think General Buhari has already won the presidential election ... he is a clean man who can tackle corruption, which is at its highest peak," newspaper editor Kalani Muhammad told Reuters at the APC convention.
MULTIPLE PROBLEMS
Jonathan has been lauded for making the boldest reforms in the power sector to date, including privatising the rotten state provider, but the benefits have yet to be felt on the grid.
How Africa's biggest economy and leading energy producer conducts this election will be closely watched by investors and world powers. Past polls have been marred by ballot-box stuffing, bullying and in some cases completely fictitious results, although the 2011 one was judged the cleanest yet.
The vote happens as Nigeria faces a falling currency and budget cuts linked to low oil prices, as well as a violent Islamist insurgency that has killed thousands. Some 200 school girls kidnapped by the militants in April remain in captivity.
Adding to regional tensions, northern elites feel Jonathan broke an unwritten "zoning" rule that the presidency should rotate between north and south every two terms when he ran in 2011. He had taken over from northerner Umaru Yar'Adua, who died in office in 2009.
Jonathan picked Vice President Nnamdi Sambo, a northerner, to run with him again.
Jonathan is the first president from the oil-producing Niger Delta, a region harbouring an enraged sense of entitlement to the oil wealth that they live on, but from which they have seen scant benefits. If he loses, the militancy that disrupted oil production last decade until a 2009 amnesty could resurface.
(Editing Jermey Gaunt and Crispian Balmer)
