Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu, who announced the result at 4.10 am, said Tinubu got 8, 794,726 votes from the 24,025, 940 total valid votes cast.
He said Tinubu’s closest challenger, Atiku, polled 6,984, 520 votes.
LP’s Obi garnered 6,101,533; while Kwankwaso of the NNPP scored 1,496,687.
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Yakubu said Tinubu, having satisfied the requirements of the law, is returned elected.
He said the certificate of return will be issued to the president-elect and the vice president elect, Kashim Shettima, by 3 pm today.
Tinubu, who defeated Atiku with over 1.8m votes, won majority of the votes cast in 12 states -Zamfara, Jigawa, Niger, Kwara, Oyo, Ekiti, Kogi, Benue, Ogun, Borno, Ondo, and Rivers states.
On his part, PDP’s Atiku, who came second, also won in 12 states even as LP’s Peter Obi led in 11 states and the FCT.
The states where Atiku won are Osun, Kebbi, Sokoto, Katsina, Kaduna, Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom, Bauchi, Yobe, Gombe, Adamawa and Taraba; while Obi won in Abia, Lagos, Edo, Enugu, Anambra, Imo, Ebonyi, Cross River, Delta, Nasarawa, Plateau and FCT.
Kwankwaso won in Kano.
PDP, LP reject result, demand Yakubu’s resignation
However, before the conclusion of the collation of the results this morning, the PDP and Labour Party had asked the INEC chairman to step down.
At a press briefing in Abuja yesterday, PDP and LP alleged widespread manipulation and rigging, and demanded that the elections be cancelled and a fresh one conducted.
This is even as the ruling APC and Tinubu have instituted a legal action to restrain the LP and the PDP from doing anything to stop the collation and announcement of the results.
Labour Party’s national chairman, Julius Abure, who spoke on behalf of his party and the PDP, said Nigerians had lost confidence in the electoral process because of INEC’s refusal to use electronic means of transmitting results as stated by the Electoral Act.
“Section 60 sub-section 5 of the Electoral Act says that the presiding officer shall transfer the results, including total number of accredited voters and the results of the ballots in a manner as prescribed by the commission. A failure to comply with the provisions of the Electoral Act and the guidelines makes it imperative that all results recently uploaded on the IReV portal must be updated before they are announced,” he said.
“We, therefore, call on Yakubu to step aside from his role,” he said.
Also, the NNPP had demanded the cancellation of the presidential poll, accusing INEC of colluding with the ruling APC to manipulate the elections.
NNPP National Chairman, Rufai Ahmed Alkali, at a press conference, said INEC’s refusal to use technology (IReV) to transmit results from polling units to the server had compromised the integrity of the elections.
He alleged that INEC had taken Nigeria back to the pre-2015 era “where voters were deliberately and systematically disenfranchised; where ballot box snatching and ballot box stuffing was the norm; where voter suppression was widespread; where violence and vote-buying were the main deciding factors of the outcome of elections.
“Where security agents openly took sides with the ruling party and participated actively in rigging elections; and where people who have not participated in an election are declared winners of the elections.”
Senator Patricia Akwashiki, chairman, Board of Trustees, ADC, in a statement, said the PDP and LP’s demands were not its position.
Meanwhile, in the court documents filed by APC and Tinubu on Tuesday before the Federal High Court in Kano and marked FHC/KN/CS/43/2023, the Action Alliance and the INEC were joined as defendants; and the APC vice presidential candidate, Kashim Shettima, as a plaintiff.
The plaintiffs, in a motion on notice filed alongside the originating summons, asked the court to make an order restraining the defendants from stopping the collation and announcement of the results because “damages will not adequately compensate for the injury that may be occasioned on the plaintiffs if by the defendants stop the collation of the result.”
The suit was supported by an affidavit deposed to by Abdullahi Abbas, the APC chairman in Kano.
However, when the counsel for the plaintiffs, Sunusi Musa (SAN), moved the ex-parte motion attached to the summons, the judge, Justice A. M. Liman, held that “the chief judge of the court has directed that no exparte application may be issued by any judge” and that in compliance with the directive, he declined to entertain the ex-parte motion.
Go to court, INEC tells aggrieved parties, says polls credible
INEC has described the call by PDP and LP for Yakubu’s resignation as misplaced.
The commission also said the allegation by Dino Melaye, a spokesman of the PDP’s presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, that it allocated scores to parties was unfounded and irresponsible.
Rotimi Lawrence Oyekanmi, the Chief Press Secretary to INEC chairman, in a statement, said contrary to the insinuations by both parties, the results emanating from the states pointed to a free, fair and credible process.
“There are laid down procedures for aggrieved parties or candidates to follow when they are dissatisfied about the outcome of an election. Such procedures do not include calling on the INEC chairman to resign or for the election to be cancelled.”
FG faults Obasanjo over call for poll annulment
The federal government yesterday told former President Olusegun Obasanjo not to truncate the 2023 general elections with his “inciting, self-serving and provocative letter” on the exercise.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, in a statement, said what Obasanjo cunningly framed as an “appeal for caution and rectification” was a calculated attempt to undermine the electoral process and a willful incitement to violence.
He expressed shock and disbelief that a former president could throw around “unverified claims and amplify wild allegations picked up from the street against the electoral process.”
The minister said, “Though masquerading as an unbiased and concerned elder statesman, former president Obasanjo is in reality a known partisan who is bent on thwarting, by subterfuge, the choice of millions of Nigerian voters.”
Don’t cause anarchy, NSCIA cautions politicians
The Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) under the leadership of its President-General and Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar, yesterday cautioned political leaders and actors against making provocative and unguarded statements which could drag the country into unnecessary conflict and anarchy.
NSCIA Deputy-Secretary General, Salisu Shehu and Director of Administration, Zubairu Haruna Usman-Ugwu, in a statement, said while reckless statements from inconsequential individuals could be easily ignored, “This is not so of those from respected political and religious leaders.
“It’s important that patriotic and well-meaning Nigerian leaders should support unrelenting adherence to process and procedure in the ongoing electoral process.
“This is because any inclination to unprocedural decision or action at this critical time is a direct call for anarchy which will not yield any positive outcome to the nation,” the council said.
It also counselled the INEC to remain undistracted and committed to its duty until it discharged it to its logical conclusion. It equally urged all Nigerians, particularly Muslims, to, no matter the level of provocation from certain quarters, remain calm and prayerful.
The council pray Allah to keep Nigeria stable and peaceful.
Tinubu’s long walk to presidency
Born on 29 March 1952, Bola Ahmed Adekunle Tinubu served as the Governor of Lagos State from 1999 to 2007 on the platform of the defunct Alliance for Democracy (AD).
His political career began in 1992, when he joined the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP) where he was a member of the Peoples Front faction led by Shehu Musa Yar’adua and made up of other politicians such as Umaru Yar’adua, Atiku Abubakar, Baba Gana Kingibe, Rabiu Kwankwaso, Abdullahi Aliyu Sumaila, Magaji Abdullahi, Dapo Sarumi and Yomi Edu.
He was elected into the Senate to represent the Lagos West Senatorial District in the short-lived Nigerian Third Republic.
Tinubu spent his early life in Nigeria and 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.
Tinubu became an activist campaigning for the return of democracy as a part of the National Democratic Coalition movement after the late military junta Sani Abacha dissolved the Senate in 1993.
Forced into exile in 1994, Tinubu returned after Abacha’s death in 1998. The former governor of Lagos State played a key role in the formation of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2013.
He led the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in the merger talks with the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) led by incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari and the defunct All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) of Dr Ogbonaya Onu as well as a faction of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) led by Rochas Okorocha. The four parties with some elements from the new Peoples Democratic Party (nPDP) came together to form the APC.
According to information obtained from Wikipedia, Tinubu’s mother, Abibatu Mogaji, was a trader that later became the Iyaloja of Lagos State.
He attended St. John’s Primary School, Aroloya, Lagos and Children’s Home School in Ibadan.
Tinubu then went to the United States in 1975, where he studied first at Richard J. Daley College in Chicago and then at Chicago State University.
He graduated in 1979 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting.
By Isiaka Wakili, Fidelis Mac-Leva, Abbas Jimoh, Muideen Olaniyi (Abuja) & Clement A. Oloyede (Kano)
