The Gambia’s opposition coalition has asked President Yahya Jammeh to step down immediately, after he challenged his defeat in the recent election.
Mr Jammeh initially accepted the result but then reversed his decision and said he would annul the election.
He questioned the validity of the count after the electoral commission changed some results, even though it insists the outcome was not affected.
BBC reports that the UN and the African Union have asked Mr Jammeh to accept defeat
Several West African leaders are to fly to The Gambia’s capital, Banjul on Tuesday to try and resolve the political crisis.
“I think he should step down now,” said Adama Barrow, who was declared the election winner.
“He has lost the election, we don’t want to waste time, we want this country to start moving,” he told the AFP news agency.
President Jammeh went on national TV over the weekend to announce his “total rejection of the election result… thereby annulling the election”.
He said “we will go back to the polls because I want to make sure every Gambian has voted”.
He said he was preparing a petition “against the flawed decision of the Independent Elections Commission”.
According to the electoral commission’s latest count, as a result of the vote on 1 December:
Adama Barrow won 222,708 votes (43.3 per cent)
President Jammeh took 208,487 (39.6 per cent)
A third-party candidate, Mama Kandeh, won 89,768 (17.1 per cent)
They were revised by the country’s electoral commission on 5 December, when it emerged that the ballots for one area had been added incorrectly, swelling Mr Barrow’s vote.
The error, which also added votes to the other candidates, “has not changed the status quo” of the result, the commission said.
However, it narrowed Mr Barrow’s margin of victory from 9 per cent to 4 per cent.
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