Nigeria: with Bola Tinubu, the ruling party remains in place

In Nigeria, the presidential election finally delivered its verdict: the candidate of the ruling party, Bola Tinubu, was elected president. He succeeds Muhammadu Buhari.

Despite some significant setbacks in several theoretically won states, the candidate of the Congress of Progressives (APC) Bola Tinubu has officially won the Nigerian Presidential. Muhammadu Buhari's party therefore retains power.

But it took time for the National Electoral Commission (Inec) to record its results. The commission will indeed have taken four days to carry out the count. thus causing the anger of the two big losers of the election, Atiku Abubakar of the PDP and Peter Obi of the Labor Party, who demanded the outright cancellation of the ballot.

Pending possible appeals from them, Bola Tinubu is therefore the new Nigerian president. “The Godfather” — his nickname — garnered 8,8 million votes and 25% of the vote in more than two-thirds of Nigeria's 36 states.

Support of Muhammadu Buhari

With 6,9 million votes, Atiku Abubakar is far behind, closely followed by Peter Obi and his 6,1 million votes. A great performance for a candidate who did not have a huge electoral machine behind him.

With worse scores in Kano, Abuja and Lagos, Tinubu knows that he has not obtained a blank check from the Nigerian electorate and that he will have to work hard to win, in a country plagued by an unprecedented economic crisis.

It now remains to be seen whether the coming days will pass peacefully. Several organizations feared post-election violence, and it is not the call of the two losers to cancel the presidential election that will calm their supporters.

Hence the call for calm launched by the newly elected president. “I call on my competitors to team up together. It's the only nation we have, it's a country we have to build together, to pick up the broken pieces, he said. We must work in unity”.

Buhari, for his part, congratulated his successor. “Elected by the people, he is the best person for this position. I will now work with him and his team to ensure a proper handover,” he wrote on social media.