Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has on Wednesday announced that 70-year-old Nigeria’s ruling party candidate Bola Ahmed Tinubu, also known as ‘Jagaban’, has won the Nigerian presidential seat, following a highly disputed election.
Bola, of the All Progressives Congress (APC) party, won 8,805,420 votes against opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate Atiku Abubakar and Labour Party’s Peter Obi, who won 6.9 and 6.1 million votes respectively.
Tinubu, was declared winner of the election by Mahmood Yakubu, chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), in the early hours of Wednesday at the National Collation Centre in Abuja.
Tinubu, was also the governor of Lagos state from 1999 to 2007.
Mr Abubakar, who served as vice president from 1999 to 2007, got 6,984,290 votes while 62-year-old Obi, a former governor of Anambra got 6,093,962 votes, and 65-year-old Rabiu Kwankwaso of New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) polled 1,496,671 votes.
While Mr Tinubu won in Rivers, Borno, Jigawa, Zamfara, Benue, Kogi, Kwara, Niger, Osun, Ekiti, Ondo, Oyo and Ogun states, Mr Abubakar won in Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto, Kaduna, Gombe, Yobe, Bauchi, Adamawa and Taraba, Osun, Akwa Ibom and Bayelsa states. Mr Obi won in Edo, Cross River, Delta, Lagos, FCT, Plateau, Imo, Ebonyi, Nasarawa, Anambra, Abia and Enugu states.
The APC candidate scored the constitutionally required majority votes, and also secured the second requirement of 25 percent of the votes in 25 states (two-thirds of Nigeria’s 36 states and Abuja), as required by Section 134 of the Constitution.
According to the Constitution, “a candidate for an election to the office of the President shall be deemed to have been duly elected, where, there being only two candidates for the election;
“(a) he has the majority of votes cast at the election; and
“(b) he has not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in each of at least two-thirds of all the States in the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.”
Tinubu has become the country’s fifth president since the end of military rule.
