Ghana's ruling party presidential candidate, Nana Akufo-Addo, retained a narrow lead over his principal challenger early on Tuesday as counting from Sunday's elections continued.

Provisional results published by the Electoral Commission of Ghana at 9pm Monday evening, Ghanaian time, showed that with about a third of votes counted, Akufo-Addo had 49.6 percent of the vote, while John Atta Mills of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) had 47 percent.

On Tuesday morning, a correspondent for the BBC radio programme, Network Africa, reported from Accra that with votes for about 60 percent of constituencies counted, Akufo-Addo remained slightly ahead.

Akufo-Addo represents the New Patriotic Party (NPP) of President John Kufuor, who has served the maximum two terms as president. The NDC is the party of former President Jerry Rawlings, Kufuor's predecessor.

The electoral commission's early results also showed that the position in parliament was the reverse of that in the presidential election - the NDC had 32 seats and the NPP 29 seats. However, results were still awaited from most of the country's 230 constituencies.

Unprecedented numbers of Ghanaians registered for the election - more than 12.8 million - and the commission reported a voter turnout of 70 percent.

Six other presidential candidates fared poorly at the polls. Papa Kwesi Nduom, the candidate of the Convention People's Party of Kwame Nkrumah, did best but with only 1.3 percent of the results announced on Monday.