The Independent National Electoral Commission Chairman and Chief Returning Officer, Professor Mahmood Yakubu at 2:30am Wednesday, declared the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the winner of Saturday’s Presidential election.
Tinubu was declared the winner of the election on Wednesday morning, after the completion of the collation and announcement of results from across Nigeria, which started at the national collation centre in Abuja, the nation’s capital, on Sunday and ended in the early hours of Wednesday, March 1.
Yakubu said that Tinubu scored 8,794,726; Atiku Abubakar (Peoples Democratic Party) received 6,984,520 votes; Peter Obi (Labour Party) secured 6, 101, 533 while Rabiu Kwankwaso of the (New Nigerian Peoples Party) scored 1,496,687.
Tinubu edged Atiku, a former vice president and his closest challenger, with no fewer than 1.8 million votes.
Professor Yakubu went on to declare the APC candidate as the winner of the presidential election and was returned elected “having satisfied the requirements of the law and scoring the highest numbers of votes”.
Recall, Nigeria’s main opposition parties had called for the country’s presidential election to be scrapped, alleging that the process had been manipulated.
The opposition parties led by PDP hinged their action on what they described as connivance between the APC and the INEC to rig the presidential election. The protesting parties had demanded that the electoral umpire uploaded the polling units results into the INEC Results Viewing Portal (IReV) to authenticate the presented results.
Despite appeals from the chairman of INEC to the parties to allow the process continue, the opposition party agents insisted on rejecting the results and continuation of the process.
