Ruling party candidate Bola Tinubu was declared the winner of Nigeria’s presidential election yesterday, and soon after thanked his supporters and appealed to his rivals, who are already demanding a revote in Africa’s most populous nation.
The announcement by election officials overnight was likely to lead to a court challenge by the second and third-highest finishers in the weekend vote, Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi.
Abubakar also finished second in the previous vote in 2019, then appealed those results before his lawsuit ultimately was dismissed.
Photo: AFP
Tinubu’s All Progressives Congress party on Tuesday urged the opposition to accept defeat and not cause trouble after they had demanded a revote saying that delays in uploading election results had made room for irregularities.
Tinubu received 37 percent of the vote, or nearly 8.8 million, while main opposition candidate Abubakar won 29 percent with almost 7 million. Third-place finisher Obi took 25 percent with about 6.1 million, the results announced on live television by the Independent National Electoral Commission showed.
The president-elect thanked his supporters in the capital, Abuja, after his victory was announced and struck a reconciliatory tone in a message directed at his political adversaries.
“I take this opportunity to appeal to my fellow contestants to let us team up together,” Tinubu said. “It is the only nation we have. It is one country and we must build together.”
The announcement of his victory came after 4am, but celebrations already had started late on Tuesday at the ruling party’s national secretariat where Tinubu’s supporters had gathered in anticipation of his victory.
“None of the others matches his record,” said Babafemi Akin as he spoke about the prospects of a Tinubu administration. “I am sure he will do well.”
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 is proven the national electoral body largely did not follow the law and acted in ways that could have changed the result.
The Supreme Court of Nigeria has never overturned a presidential election, although court challenges are common, including by Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, who doggedly fought his past election losses for months in vain.
Nigeria’s presidential election has been closely watched as the country is not only the continent’s largest economy, but it is also one of the continent’s top oil producers.
Observers have said that Saturday’s election was “mostly peaceful,” although delays caused some voters to wait until the following day to cast their ballots.
Many Nigerians had difficulties getting to their polling stations because of a currency redesign that resulted in a shortage of bank notes.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
RSS