Summary:
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Even though he was accused of violence and voting fraud, Bola Tinubu, a candidate for Nigeria’s ruling party, was declared the winner of the country’s most heated election in a decade.
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Opposition parties have also called for a rerun of the election.
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Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party got 29% of the vote, Tinubu, who is 70 and from the All Progressives Congress (APC), got 37%, and Peter Obi, who is not from the APC, got 25% of the vote for the Labour Party.
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A painful run-off was unnecessary because Tinubu won the popular vote and at least 25% of the votes in two-thirds of the states, including the capital Abuja.
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The Nigerian economy is worse than before Buhari’s election in 2015 on every single metric.
Even though he was accused of violence and voting fraud, Bola Tinubu, a candidate for Nigeria’s ruling party, was declared the winner of the country’s most heated election in a decade. Opposition parties have also called for a rerun of the election.
Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party got 29% of the vote, Tinubu, who is 70 and from the All Progressives Congress (APC), got 37%, and Peter Obi, who is not from the APC, got 25% of the vote for the Labour Party.
Even though many Nigerians think that Muhammadu Buhari wasted his eight years as president, his victory in the race to replace him strengthens the APC’s hold on the continent’s largest economy and top oil exporter.
A painful run-off was unnecessary because Tinubu won the popular vote and at least 25% of the votes in two-thirds of the states, including the capital Abuja. It would have been Nigeria’s first, made feasible by Obi’s participation in the race.
“I’d want to use this opportunity to ask my fellow competitors to allow us to form a team.” Our only nation is that one. In his victory speech, the president-elect emphasized that “it is one country, and we must create it together.”
Ahead are tense days
Even so, the future is uncertain for Africa’s most populous country because the opposition parties say the process was unfair.
On election day, there were long wait times, problems with the new electronic IDs, violent outbursts, and threats against election workers. Nigeria’s recent currency swap scheme caused a statewide cash shortage, making it difficult for many people to vote readily. Abubakar and Obi’s representatives rushed out of the national tallying centre on Monday.
Former Malawian President and election observer Joyce Banda said that the results “fell woefully short of what Nigerian citizens could have expected.” A delegation from the European Union said that poor communication and planning “eroded faith in the process.”
A challenging inheritance for the new leader
Unrest and rejections could ruin an important election for the stability of West Africa and be a turning point for the continent’s most populous country.
Nigeria has many problems, such as an unstable economy, an Islamist uprising, and a terrible rise in kidnappings.
According to the Nigerian Senate, oil theft in the Niger Delta cost the nation $2 billion in the first eight months of last year and prevented it from meeting its Opec production goals.
According to Mucahid Durmaz, senior Africa analyst at risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft, “the economy is in a catastrophic position.” The Nigerian economy is worse than before Buhari’s election in 2015 on every metric. The upcoming administration’s ability to address insecurity and socioeconomic inequality will be weakened by the fiscal crisis and high debt burden, as debt servicing obligations will soon exceed all government revenues.
Obi’s slick campaign and reformist platform attracted young, educated Nigerians. Abubakar, who is 76 years old, and Tinubu, one of Nigeria’s wealthiest politicians, represent Nigeria’s political establishment.
Pro-democracy Tinubu, an oil executive and accountant exiled by the late dictator Sani Abacha in the 1990s, oversaw Lagos, Nigeria’s economic center, between 1999 and 2007, when the city attracted significant foreign investment.
Tinubu is still in charge of the state’s finances, even though he is no longer in power, and the country’s public infrastructure is in bad shape right now. He has also been accused of graft, money laundering, fraud, and tax evasion. Before being exonerated, he was twice brought before Nigeria’s Code of Conduct Tribunal. So, the election of His Excellency Tinubu will worry anti-corruption activists.
Like Buhari, he has had health problems because of a series of slip-ups at rallies. Tinubu’s campaign posted an eight-second clip of him using an exercise bike to show that he was healthy.
For Nigeria, more of the same?
One of the biggest surprises of the election was when Tinubu’s home state of Lagos saw Obi easily defeat him.
Still, Tinubu’s victory after four days of counting shows that the APC’s party machinery works well in all key states. In the six elections held in Nigeria since the country’s return to civilian control in 1999, the incumbent party has only lost one.
After eight wasted years, Tinubu had to thank his political friend Buhari for his service while promising “renewed hope.” His supporters claim he intends to rebuild Nigeria’s failing economy, give the states greater authority, and establish regional centers for trade routes. Nigeria has a large, youthful, entrepreneurial populace ready to be utilized.
Analysts, however, believe that in contrast to Abubakar and Obi’s intentions to increase domestic manufacturing to drastically generate jobs, his win could mean more of the same for Nigeria.
According to Durmaz, a Tinubu presidency “would entail a continuation of Buhari’s policies with statist interventions, like the closing of Nigeria’s land borders in 2019 in an unsuccessful attempt to boost domestic manufacturing.”
