The electoral commission, INEC, has declared 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 took part in the election.
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He scored a total of 8,794,726 votes, the highest of all the candidates, thus meeting the first constitutional requirement to be declared the winner.He also scored over 25 per cent of the votes cast in 30 states, more than the 24 states constitutionally required. 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 polled a total of 6,984,520 votes in the election, Peter Obi of the Labour 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.
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Tinubu, 70, is the former governor of Lagos state, home to Nigeria’s megacity of the same name. However, he lost the state in Saturday’s election to Obi, who drew a strong following among younger voters eager for change.
The parties now have three weeks to appeal results, but an election can be invalidated only if it’s proven the national electoral body largely didn’t follow the law and acted in ways that could have changed the result.
The Supreme Court of Nigeria has never overturned a presidential election, though court challenges are common, including by outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari, who doggedly fought his past election losses for months in vain.
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The annoucement is likely to lead to a court challenge by second and third highest finishers, Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi. They had already called for the presidential election to be canceled and rerun, saying that it had been compromised by vote rigging and widespread violence. They also asked the head of the election commission to step down.