While the Togolese voted to elect their new president on Saturday, February 22, an important security device was put in place. The home of an opposition candidate was, for example, surrounded by security forces, installed military roadblocks and sometimes cut internet access.

Togolese security forces surrounded the home of opposition presidential candidate Agbéyomé Kodjo for a few hours, just after the polling stations closed, said the opponent.

"They have just left," said the candidate of the Patriotic Movement for Development and Democracy (MPDD) to Radio France Internationale after a few hours of closing up the streets that lead to his home in Lomé.

The police said they wanted to "guarantee his safety" by surrounding his home as well as that of the former archbishop of Lomé, who showed him his support during the campaign.

Elsewhere in the Togolese capital, military checkpoints were being set up, but everything was calm in the country.

Internet access was interrupted sporadically in the capital, but in Sokodé and in the north, several sources contacted by AFP assured that the internet had been cut around 6 p.m. (6 p.m. GMT).

The historic opposition party, the National Alliance for Change (ANC) also said that its "politicians are victims of their telephone cut off which hinders communications with our delegates at the polling stations", on his twitter account.

Average attendance at polling stations

The 9,383 polling stations in the country closed as agreed at 4 p.m. (local and GMT), and had an average attendance in Lomé, and rather weak in the localities of north and center-north according to information collected by journalists of AFP.

Dressed in a blue linen suit, outgoing President Faure Gnassingbé said he was "proud" of the "peaceful course of the electoral process" of the day. "I would like to urge you all to go to the polls to express your choice in complete freedom for a better expression of our democracy," he insisted in a small primary school in the commune.

Official results are expected earlier this week, sources in the Independent National Electoral Commission (Ceni) say and the six opposition candidates have already said they will unite to stand against the outgoing president, Faure Gnassingbé in the event of a second round.

However, the opposition, which contested all the previous elections in 2005, 2010 and 2015, feared "fraud" and its supporters insisted on attending the counting of the ballots. An opposition candidate, Agbéyomé Kodjo, who also voted in Lomé, insisted that "the Togolese want change, they want alternation". The civil society organization Togo Debout said that it had identified "ballot box stuffing here and there, in Lomé and in Vogan (south)". Many voters had warned that they would not participate in a poll that they considered neither free nor transparent.

With AFP

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