By Ade Martins
Bola Tinubu has been declared winner of the presidential elections
Results from the 176,846 polling stations were counted manually and were then relayed electronically to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) headquarters in Abuja, for posting on its website.
The results were also tallied at the ward, local government and state level.
A returning officer from each state was to travel to Abuja with a tally sheet, to be compared against results sent directly by polling stations to the national collation centre.
The 70-year-old veteran politician got 37% of the vote, official results show.
His main rival Atiku Abubakar polled 29%, and Labour’s Peter Obi 25%. Their parties had earlier dismissed the poll as a sham, and demanded a rerun.
Mr Tinubu is one of Nigeria’s richest politicians, premised his campaign on his record of rebuilding the Lagos, when he was governor. Yet, he lost Lagos to Peter Obi, but won a majority of the other states.
President Muhammadu Buhari called on opposition parties not to undermine the electoral commission, adding that the results announced by the poll body show democracy is “ripening” in the West African country.
“The results reveal democracy’s ripening in our country. Votes and those that cast them cannot be taken for granted. Each must be earned. Competition is good for our democracy. There is no doubt the people’s decision has been rendered in the results we look at today,” Buhari said in a tweet.
“If any candidate believes they can prove the fraud they claim is committed against them, then bring forward the evidence. To take to the streets means they are not doing it in the interest of the people, but rather to inflame, to put people in harm’s way and all for personal, selfish gains,” Buhari said.
“Do not undermine the credibility of INEC [The Independent National Electoral Commission]. Let us now move forward as one. The people have spoken,” he added.
He will become Nigeria’s fifth elected president since 1999, winning the race for the country’s top job on his first attempt.
Buhari congratulated his soon-to-be successor in a statement Wednesday, calling him “the best person for the job.”
Vote counting since Saturday’s polls has been disputed by many who allege the process has been marred by corruption and technical failures. On Tuesday, the country’s main opposition parties described the results of the election as “heavily doctored and manipulated” in a joint news conference.
They said they had lost confidence in Yakubu, the electoral body chairman, and that the results “do not reflect the wishes of Nigerians expressed at the polls on February 25, 2023.”
The INEC has rejected the calls for a fresh vote , with one spokesperson insisting the election process had been “free, fair and credible.”
Tinubu broke convention by not splitting is presidential tickets with a Christian from the south, since he is a Muslim, but this did not deter Nigerians from accepting him.
He now has the task of unifying a country that is wounded, and many of whom feel cheated in an election so far shown to have been mainly fair.