2023 KOGI, IMO & BAYELSA GUBERNATORIAL ELECTION UPDATES
INEC Declares Tinubu Winner Of Nigeria’s 2023 Presidential Election
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Tinubu is Nigeria’s president-elect.
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He was the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
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His declaration as winner of the presidential election marks the end of an intense, sometimes chaotic, electoral process.
Eko Hot Blog reports that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has declared Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) the winner of Nigeria’s 2023 presidential election.
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The INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, made the declaration at the election results collation centre in Abuja in the early hours of Wednesday, March 1, 2023.
INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu and other electoral officers at the collation centre
According to INEC, Tinubu polled 8,794,726 votes from the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
He was followed by Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who scored 6,984,520 votes.
The Labour Party’s flagbearer, Peter Obi, who defied the expectations of millions of Nigerians, was not far behind with 6,101,533 votes while Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) scored 1,496,687 votes.
Tinubu captured victory in 12 states, Obi won 11 states plus the FCT, and Atiku won 12 states, while Kwankwaso won one state, his home state of Kano.
Yakubu said the APC presidential candidate was returned elected after satisfying the requirements of the constitution.
According to Section 134 of the Nigerian Constitution, a presidential candidate can only be announced as the winner if he or she has the majority of votes cast at the election; and has not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in at least two-thirds of all the States in the Federation and the FCT.
President-elect Bola Tinubu
Tinubu is a former governor of Lagos State, the commercial capital of Nigeria.
His rise to the Nigerian presidency marks the climax of a highly successful political career that spans decades.
The president-elect spent his early life in southwestern Nigeria but later moved to the United States where he studied Accounting at Chicago State University.
He returned to Nigeria in the early 1980s and was employed by Mobil Nigeria as an accountant, before entering politics as a Lagos West senatorial candidate in 1992 under the banner of the Social Democratic Party.
He won the race but his tenure as lawmaker was short-lived by the military regime.
Tinubu became a pro-democracy activist for the return of democracy as a part of the National Democratic Coalition movement after former Head of State Sani Abacha dissolved the Senate in 1993.
The president-elect was forced into exile in 1994 but returned after Abacha’s 1998 death triggered the beginning of the transition to the Fourth Republic.
In the first post-transition Lagos State governorship election in 1999, Tinubu won by a landslide as a member of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) over the PDP’s Dapo Sarumi and the All People’s Party’s Nosirudeen Kekere-Ekun.
He won re-election to a second term over the PDP’s Funsho Williams by a reduced margin in 2003.
Tinubu, often regarded as the architect of modern Lagos, spent his two terms as governor attempting to modernising the city of Lagos amid his constant feuds with the PDP-controlled federal government.
Despite leaving office in 2007, the former Lagos governor has maintained a tight grip over governance in the state.
He has played a key role in the emergence of every governor that has come after him.
Each governor has been tasked with executing Tinubu’s “masterplan” for modern Lagos State.
The president-elect played a key role in the formation of the APC, which uprooted the powerful PDP after 16 years in power in 2015.
The APC he helped form has propelled him to the highest political office in Nigeria.
The party made Tinubu its nominee in June 2022 after he won a primary election by a landslide, beating Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and a few other aspirants.
During the presidential campaign, the opponents of the then APC candidate often questioned his physical fitness to hold office, but the 70-year-old always dismissed the concerns, saying his brain is the most important tool to run the office.
Tinubu, who famously said Emi Lo Kan (It’s my turn) during the campaign, has now achieved his “lifelong ambition.”
His supporters are hopeful that he will turn around the fortunes of a dwindling economy and worsening insecurity he will potentially inherit as president.
Tinubu has often been praised for having “good eyes” for talent and Nigerians will be anticipating who makes his cabinet.
FURTHER READING
He will be sworn into office on May 29, 2023, as the fifth president of the Fourth Republic.
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