The ruling party’s candidate Bola Tinubu won Nigeria’s most disputed weekend election on Wednesday, securing the former Lagos governor’s lifelong ambition to become president of Africa’s most populous democracy.
With Muhammadu Buhari stepping down as president after two terms, many Nigerians are hoping Saturday’s vote will bring in a leader who can tackle growing insecurity, economic woes and poverty.
Tinubu, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), won 8.8 million votes against 6.9 million for the opposition candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, and 6.1 million for Peter Obi’s Labor Party, according to final results.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) confirmed Tinubu as president-elect after he also secured the required 25% of votes in two-thirds of Nigeria’s 36 states and capitals.
Supporters packed into the APC party’s campaign headquarters in Abuja, dancing to Afrobeats music to greet Tinubu, who arrived wearing a traditional pale blue robe and red cap.
“This is a serious mandate – I accept it. To serve you… to work with you and make Nigeria great,” Tinubu said as supporters cheered “Jagaban”, the title of tribal chief.
“I invite my fellow contestants to join us. It is the only nation we have. This is one nation we must build together,” he said.
Even before the final tally, though, Labor and PDP have called for the vote to be cancelled, alleging manipulation of the results. It is unclear whether he will take the case to court.
Tinubu, 70, a long-time political kingmaker who ran on experience as governor of Lagos from 1999 to 2007, campaigned saying “It’s my turn” to rule Africa’s largest economy.
He promised “new hope” but faced questions from rivals about his health, past corruption allegations and his relationship with Buhari, who many critics say has failed to deliver on his promises to make Nigeria safer.
“He has done it before, and we know he will do better than what he did in Lagos,” said supporter Adenike Mutiat Abubakar. “He’s a crowd person, so everyone wants him.”
The race is tight
The election was a tight race for the first time since Nigeria ended military rule in 1999, after third-party challenger Obi’s Labor Party attracted younger voters with a message of change from the two old guard rivals.
Abubakar PDP, a businessman and former vice president, lost his sixth attempt at the presidency.
Saturday’s vote was mostly peaceful but marred by delays at many polling stations and some intimidation by thugs, while technical glitches disrupted the uploading of results to INEC’s central website, raising concerns of vote rigging.
“Elections cannot be compromised,” Labor Party chairman Julius Abure told reporters on Tuesday. “We demand that these fraudulent elections be canceled immediately.”
INEC introduced biometric voter identification technology for the first time at the national level and IReV central database to upload results to improve transparency.
But opposition parties say failures in the tally system allowed for ballot manipulation and disparities in the results of manual counts at local polling stations.
But INEC rejected the opposition’s allegations.
“Contrary to the insinuation by both parties, the results emanating from the State point to a free, fair and credible process,” INEC said.
He said the parties should allow the process to take place and then take their claims to court.
But international observers, including from the European Union, noted major logistical problems, disenfranchised voters and limited transparency by INEC.
In 2019, INEC had to postpone the election for a week just a few hours before the voting started. Abubakar lamented fraud when Buhari defeated him that time, but the country’s Supreme Court later threw out his claim.
Lagos was shocked
One of the surprise results was the victory of Obi in Lagos, the state with the largest number of registered voters and the traditional stronghold of Tinubu, known as the “Godfather of Lagos”.
After a grassroots and social media campaign, Obi, a former governor of Anambra State, managed to attract voters with a message that offered a change from Nigeria’s establishment politics.
The megacity state has put Nigeria on the cultural map with its spectacular Nollywood movie scene and global Afrobeats stars such as Burna Boy, but almost half of Nigerians live in poverty and inflation is in double digits.
The security issues that await Nigeria’s next leader are many.
A grinding Islamist insurgency in the northeast has displaced more than two million people, bandit militias are carrying out mass kidnappings in the northwest and separatists are attacking police in the southeast.
Nigeria is Africa’s top oil producer but struggles with sporadic fuel shortages, huge energy import bills due to a limited number of refineries and theft of crude oil from wells and pipelines.
© Agence France-Presse