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On Wednesday morning Bola Tinubu was declared the winner of the presidential elections in Nigeria, the important African state in which Saturday votes were held to elect a new president and renew the parliament. Tinubu’s victory, anticipated in recent days by the first official counts, is contested by the country’s two main opposition parties, according to whom the electronic system for transmitting results used for the first time in Saturday’s elections was used little transparent.
Tinubu is part of outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari’s center party, the Congress of All Progressives: the two candidates who are contesting the election result are Atiku Abubakar of the centre-right People’s Democratic Party and Peter Obi, of the Labor Party, centre-left.
According to official data, Tinubu, who is 70, won 36 percent of the vote (circa 8.8 million), against 29 and 25 percent (7 and 6.1 million) obtained respectively by Abubakar and Obi, 76 and 61 years old.
Of the three, Obi was the candidate who had attracted the most attention during the electoral campaign: he is particularly popular especially among the youngest, the largest part of Nigeria’s electorate, and represented a certain degree of novelty. Throughout its democratic history, Nigerian politics had in fact been dominated by the other two parties, those of Tinubu and Abubakar.
Tinubu’s victory was declared at the end of a slow counting, precisely because it was contested. Tinubu is the former governor of the state of Lagos, that of the city of the same name and former capital of the country, in which Obi obtained the majority of votes.
Tinubu is one of the richest politicians in the country, often nicknamed “the Godfather” for his influence: over time he has been accused of awarding work contracts and contracts in a non-transparent way to people close and loyal to him, regardless of their abilities. Another accusation that has been leveled against him is that he has often increased the audience of his rallies using the so-called area boyso hypocrisystreet kids engaged in criminal activities, often exploited by local politicians for various purposes.
Tinubu based his electoral campaign on the promise of solving the many economic and social problems left unresolved by Buhari’s presidency, and by leveraging the results obtained as governor of the state of Lagos between 1999 and 2007.
Another reason Tinubu’s victory is disputed is his religious affiliation: Tinubu is Muslim, like his predecessor Buhari. In Nigeria, a country of many religious divisions, there is a kind of unwritten custom which involves alternating presidents from the predominantly Muslim north and presidents from the predominantly Christian south, usually flanked by candidates for vice-presidency from opposite origin.
A Southern Christian president like Obi was expected to be elected. Tinubu comes from the south but is Muslim, and has chosen Kashim Shettima, also a Muslim, as his candidate for vice president.
Opposition candidates are now calling for a new vote. They have three weeks to appeal the result of the elections, which can only be annulled if it can be proved that there have been irregularities or errors in the counting of votes. In Nigeria, appeals against election results are frequent, but so far the Nigerian Supreme Court has never annulled them.