Hikmah Tiamiyu

In the early morning of March 1, the Independent National  Electoral Commission, INEC, announced the former governor of Lagos state, Bola Ahmed Tinubu who contested under the flagship of the ruling party, All Progressive Congress as the winner  in the just concluded presidential elections amidst closely contested results.

The election despite having 18 candidates was a four-way race between Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr. Gregory Peter Obi of the Labour Party, Mr. Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), and Mr. Rabiu Kwakwanso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP). 

The Nigerian constitution demands that a presidential candidate must not only have more votes but also at least one-quarter (25%) of all the votes cast in two-third of the states in the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) as written in Section 133 (b) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended).

While All Progressive Congress (APC), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) won 12 states each with 8,794,726 votes and 6,984,520 votes respectively,  Labour Party (LP) won 11 states and FCT with 6,101,533 votes but the APC had 25 percent votes in 30 states, PDP trailing with 21 states, LP in a distant third with 16 states and NNPP had only one state with 25 percent votes.

Tinubu’s total votes of 8,794,726 is the lowest votes to claim victory in a presidential election since the return of democracy to Nigeria in 1999. No presidential candidate has won the election with less than 50% of the total valid votes since 2019 until Tinubu won with a 36.6% of the total valid votes.

Umaru Musa Yar’adua has been the only one who won presidential election with the highest number of votes with 24,638,063 votes and 69.6% of the total votes.