Nairobi/Accra  - The last Ghanaian constituency to vote in a run-off presidential election appeared Saturday to have handed victory to opposition candidate John Atta Mills, although final results were yet to be announced amid claims of fraud.

The remote farming constituency of Tain could not complete its vote in Sunday's presidential run-off election as planned after problems distributing the ballots.

Provisional ballots from the Tain vote, which took place on Friday, gave Atta Mills of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) 19,566 votes to 2,035 votes for Nana Akufo-Addo of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP).

Atta Mills already held a 23,055-vote lead in the overall election, pointing toward victory for the NDC.

However, the electoral commission is expected to examine allegations of fraud before announcing the final result.

Electoral Commission Chairman Kwadwo Afari-Gyari is expected to announce the winner at 1100 GMT Saturday, leaving little time for a reversal of previously declared results.

The NPP on Thursday brought two court cases, one aimed at stopping the Tain vote and the other at stopping the electoral commission from announcing the results. The ruling party claims fraud in the NDC stronghold of Volta.

The ruling party failed in both attempts and boycotted the vote in Tain, which it lost in the inconclusive first round in early December.

The election is seen as key to African democracy, which sorely needs a boost after electoral chaos in Kenya and Zimbabwe and coups in Mauritania and Guinea last year.

Foreign election monitoring teams have said that both the first round and the run-off were credible, despite both parties levelling accusations of fraud, harassment and intimidation.

Ghana, like Kenya before the post-election violence that followed December 2007's presidential elections, is considered one of Africa's few truly functioning democracies.

The West African nation underwent coups in the 1970s and 1980s, but coup leader Jerry Rawlings organized elections and went on to win two terms.

He then handed over power to Kufuor in 2000 when his party's candidate - Atta Mills in his first attempt at the presidency - lost.

Ghana has thus managed several peaceful handovers of power, but this time around the stakes are particularly high, since whoever wins the election will lead Ghana into the oil era.

Ghana's National Petroleum Corporation expects 120,000 barrels per day to come onstream in 2010, with that figure rising to 250,000 barrels a day within two years.

Ghana is the second-largest cocoa grower in the world after Ivory Coast and Africa's second-biggest gold producer after South Africa, yet there is still widespread poverty among ordinary Ghanaians. (dpa)