489
The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC has declared the Presidential Candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the President-elect of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
The INEC chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu said at about 4.10 am Wednesday that as the chief returning officer for the presidential election, he certified the election that was contested on Saturday February 25.
After giving a breakdown of the figures polled by each of the 18 presidential candidates, he declared Tinubu elected as Nigeria’s president having satisfied the requirements of the law.
The keenly contested presidential election concluded with official results from 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja finally compiled in the early hours of Wednesday.
According to him, Tinubu’s APC won with 8,794 726, PDP came second with 6,984,520, and Labour Party 6,101,533 while NNPP scored 1,490 687 according to results presented by state collation officers for the presidential election (SCOPs) before the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Mahmood Yakubu, at the National Collation Centre in Abuja, from 36 states and the FCT.
According to Section 134 of the Nigerian Constitution, a presidential candidate can only be announced as the winner if he or she has the majority of votes cast at the election; and has not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in at least two-thirds of all the States in the Federation and the FCT.
Sub-section 3 of the same section states explicitly that “in default of a candidate duly elected in accordance with subsection (2) of this section there shall be a second election”.