The electoral commission, INEC, has announced Bola Tinubu, the candidate of Nigeria’s ruling party, APC, as the winner of Saturday’s presidential election.
Mr. Tinubu defeated 17 other candidates who participated in the election. He received a total of 8,794,726 votes, the highest of all candidates, thus meeting the first constitutional requirement to be declared the winner.
He also won more than 25 percent of the vote in 30 states, more than the constitutionally required 24 states.
INEC Chairman Mahmood Yakubu, who announced the final results in the early hours of Wednesday in Abuja, said Atiku Abubakar of the PDP came second in the election.
Atiku approved a total of 6,984,520 votes in the election.
Peter Obi of the Labor Party came third in the election with a total of 6,101,533 votes, while Rabiu Kwankwaso of the NNPP came fourth with 1,496,687 votes.
Mr. Yakubu said the Return Certificates for the President and Vice President will be presented at 3pm on Wednesday at the National Collation Centre.
Only the top four candidates won the presidential election in at least one state. Messrs. Tinubu, Atiku and Obi each won in 12 states, while Mr. Kwankwaso won only in Kano.
However, winning the majority of the country is not a requirement for a candidate to be declared the winner of the election.
Winning Countries
Mr. Tinubu won the elections in Rivers, Borno, Jigawa, Zamfara, Benue, Kogi, Kwara, Niger, Osun, Ekiti, Ondo, Oyo and Ogun.
Atiku won in Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto, Kaduna, Gombe, Yobe, Bauchi, Adamawa and Taraba states. He also won in Osun, Akwa Ibom and Bayelsa states.
Mr. Obi won in Edo, Cross River, Delta, Lagos, FCT, Plateau, Imo, Ebonyi, Nasarawa, Anambra, Abia and Enugu.
Mr. Kwankwaso won only in Kano State.
Call LP/PDP for cancellation
While the APC and its supporters celebrated their electoral victory, the PDP and LP called for the annulment of the results.
The PDP and LP announced their positions at a Tuesday press conference attended by their vice presidential candidates, Ifeanyi Okowa and Datti Baba-Ahmed.
“This election is fake, and it was never free and fair,” said Mr. Okowa of the PDP, a position reinforced by the LP vice-presidential candidate.
The main grouse is that INEC has failed to upload election results in over 170,000 polling units to the central server (IReV) as required by law. These steps should be taken before the collection and announcement of results, he said.
At the press conference, the two parties also demanded that the chairman of INEC, Mahmood Yakubu, must get rid of what they described as electoral irregularities and malfeasance. INEC has since responded, saying its chairman will not resign and that any party aggrieved by the electoral process must follow the law to lodge a complaint.