Electoral commission: Tinubu new president
ABUJA, NIGERIA >> Election officials declared ruling party candidate Bola Tinubu the winner of Nigeria’s presidential election early Wednesday, with the two leading opposition candidates already demanding a revote in Africa’s most populous nation.
The overnight announcement was likely to lead to a court challenge by his main opponents Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi. Abubakar also finished second in the last vote in 2019, then appealed those results before his lawsuit ultimately was dismissed.
On Tuesday, the two leading opposition parties had demanded a revote, saying that delays in uploading election results had made room for irregularities. The ruling All Progressives Congress party urged the opposition to accept defeat and not cause trouble.
The two major opposition parties on Tuesday called for the presidential election to be canceled and rerun, saying that it had been compromised by vote rigging and widespread violence.
The election over the weekend in the West African nation — the most populous on the continent, with 220 million people — was the most wide open in years, with a surprise third-party candidate putting up an assertive challenge.
On Tuesday, the chairs of the two major opposition parties — the People’s Democratic Party and the Labour Party — called for the head of the government’s electoral commission to resign, even as the commission continued to release results.
With more than twothirds of the 36 states reporting results, by Tuesday evening, Bola Tinubu, the candidate of the governing All Progressives Congress party appeared some distance ahead of his rivals in the count, with 39% of the vote. To win, a candidate needs an absolute majority plus 25% of the vote in two-thirds of the nation’s 36 states.
“We demand that this sham of an election be immediately canceled,” said Julius Abure, chair of the Labour Party. “We have totally lost faith in the whole process.”
The Independent National Electoral Commission, or INEC, had said in a statement Monday that it took “full responsibility” for the logistical problems and delays.
Many Nigerians had looked to the election to put the country back on track after eight years of rule by an ailing president, Muhammadu Buhari — a military dictator turned democrat. Buhari had reached his two-term limit and was not running for reelection.
“Everybody was expecting a free and fair election,” said Daniel Offor, a 21-yearold fashion stylist in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, who said he voted for an opposition candidate.
“But it’s obviously been rigged. What happened last time is happening again,” he said, referring to previous elections that were tainted by allegations of vote rigging.
Under Buhari’s leadership, the Giant of Africa, as Nigeria is known, lurched from one economic shock to the next.
More than 60% of people live in poverty, while security crises — including kidnapping, terrorism, militancy in oil-rich areas and clashes between herdsmen and farmers — have multiplied.
Shortages of fuel and cash — the latter because the government recently redesigned the currency and people could not get access to the new notes — have caused widespread suffering.