Bola Ahmed Tinubu has been elected as Nigeria’s fifth president since the country’s return to democracy in 1999.
Development Diaries reports that the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) was Wednesday morning declared winner of arguably Nigeria’s most hotly contested presidential election.
Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Mahmood Yakubu, announced Tinubu as the winner of the February 25 election at the National Collation Centre in Abuja in front of journalists, party agents and observers.
‘That Tinubu Bola Ahmed of the APC, having satisfied the requirement of the law, is hereby declared the winner and is returned elected’, Yakubu declared.
The former Lagos State governor secured 8,794,726 votes, almost two million votes ahead of second-placed Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Abubakar got 6,984,520 votes, while the candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, finished the race with 6,101,533.
Former Kano State Governor and candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), Rabiu Kwankwaso, finished fourth with 1,496,687 votes.
For any candidate to be declared the winner by INEC, they must meet two requirements: get the highest number of valid votes and secure at least 25 percent of the votes in at least two-thirds of the country’s 36 states, including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
Tinubu got the highest votes and secured 25 percent or more in over 25 states.
Opposition parties had complained bitterly that INEC officials at the polling units were unable to upload election results electronically to the commission’s Results Viewing Portal (IReV), as stipulated by Section 60 of the Electoral Act 2022.
The IReV and the bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS) are new technologies introduced by INEC for the accreditation and electronic transmission of votes for this year’s polls.
The commission had promised that there was no going back on the use of BVAS for the 2023 elections.
However, that did not happen as the commission allowed the transmission of results manually, thereby raising concerns over election transparency.
Development Diaries had called on the commission to publish a comprehensive report of BVAS across the country alongside the results of the presidential elections.
