By: Nneji Godwin Amako
On Monday May 29, 2023, Bola Ahmed Tinubu became the 16th President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. He also assumes the title of Commander-In-Chief of Nigeria’s Armed Forces.
At 10:28 a.m. and 10:38 a.m. ( Nigeria’s time), Tinubu and his deputy, Kashim Shettima, took the oath of office administered by the Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN Olukayode Ariwoola at the inauguration ceremony held at Eagles Square, Abuja, the nation’s capital.
In his inaugural speech, Tinubu expressed his love for the nation and his faith in its people. He emphasied on the need to march beyond the challenges and work towards a better society. He asserts Nigeria’s strength and resilience, declaring Nigeria the ‘champion of the Black race’. He also extended olive branch to his fellow contestants.
Recall that Tinubu emerged Nigeria’s President-elecet on the platform of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC following the outcome of February 25 presidential election after polling highest votes cast to defeat his closest rivals; former Vice President and candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, the Labour Party’s candidate, Peter Obi and Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria’s Peoples Party (NNPP)
Following his oath of office, Tinubu has become the new President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria succeeding the two terms of eight years by former President Muhammadu Buhari.
On February 25, 2023, Nigerians went to the polls in what many political analysts described as‘’a fiercely-contested election in recent times.’’ The poll was the 7th general election since the end of military rule in 1999. Since the beginning of the Fourth Republic in 1999, Nigeria has enjoyed uninterrupted democracy for 24 years, the longest stretch since its independence in 1960.
As monitored by A-Z African Magazine, the election, conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared Tinubu, as Nigeria’s next president. He polled 8,794,726 votes. His closest rival, Atiku Abubakar scored 6,984,520 votes to emerge second in the election. Peter Obi got a total of 6,101,533 votes while Rabiu Kwankwaso came fourth with 1,496,687 votes.
Reports indicate that Tinubu who is a former governor of Nigeria’s wealthy Lagos State, wields significant influence in the southwestern region where he is acclaimed as a political godfather and kingmaker. ‘’After decades as a political puppet master, Tinubu declared it was now his turn to emerge from the shadows into the presidency; his campaign slogan is “Emi Lokan,” which translates to “it is my turn,” in his native Yoruba language,’’ a resident of Lagos who spoke to our correspondent said.
Analyzing the outcome of the presidential election, A-Z Magazine in this report gave a rundown of how the poll was won and lost by the four contending parties, tagged: the four-horse race.
According to record gotten from INEC, Tinubu got more votes from the north-west — the largest voting geo-political grouping in the country — than from the south-west, his home zone. Atiku a Fulani was naturally expected to be the “homeboy” in the north in a country where ethnic and religious identities usually have a defining impact on voting patterns. Before the February 25 election, there were permutations that Tinubu’s failure to pick a Fulani as running mate — Kashim Shettima is Kanuri from the north-east — was going to hurt his chances up north. This permutation was not totally wrong: Atiku won four of the seven north-western states — Kaduna, Katsina, Kebbi and Sokoto. Tinubu picked two — Jigawa and Zamfara. Kwankwaso took his home state, Kano.
Tinubu beat Atiku in the north-west, scoring 2,652,824 votes compared to his opponent’s 2,197,824. Not only were Atiku’s margins in some of the states narrow, Tinubu took a whopping half a million votes in Kano alone. In fact, Tinubu got 30 percent of his total votes from the north-west. That is almost one-third.
Tinubu got his second highest votes from his home zone, the south-west, but also got some embarrassment, conceding two goals as it were. He lost Lagos, his state and place of comfort since 1999, to Labour Party’s Peter Obi. He also lost Osun to Atiku. Despite the big blow, he still got his highest number of votes from Lagos state: 572,606. In a sense, every vote for LP was also a vote for APC because in times past, PDP might have benefitted and that would have increased Atiku’s tally.
The entire south-west gave Tinubu 2,542,979, second to the north-west. There is a vital context — his second highest votes came from Kano where he also came second. The third was also from a state where he came second: Katsina. Coming second in certain states is better than coming first in others. He was first in Ekiti state, for instance, but he got only 200,000 votes but he got more than double the figure in Kano to place second.
While his opponents picked states in the south-west, Tinubu got a miserable one percent of his total votes from the south-East, Obi’s home zone. He got a total of 127,605 votes from the five states and did not score 25 percent in any of them. South-east’s preference for Obi was evident. No other candidate met the 25 percent in any of the five states: Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo. The zone used to be won by the PDP. This was the first election since 1999 that the PDP did not win the zone.
Tinubu got his lowest votes nationwide from Enugu state — 4,772, followed by Anambra (5,111), Abia (8,914), Ebonyi (42,402), Bayelsa (42,572) and Imo (66,406).
Although Bayelsa gave him only 42,572 votes, he met the 25 percent requirement there. Meanwhile, Tinubu came second in Ebonyi and Imo, two states controlled by the APC. Remarkably, Tinubu came either first or second in all the geopolitical zones. He won only one zone in the south — the south-west — but came second in the south-south and south-east. South-south’s 799,957 votes for Tinubu contributed 9 percent to his total haul.
In the north, Tinubu led in the north-west and north-central. Some pundits had tipped Obi to win the north-central because of the Christians who are thought to be opposed to APC’s Muslim-Muslim ticket. Tinubu picked four of the six north-central states — Kwara, Kogi, Niger and Benue — leaving Obi with two: Plateau and Nasarawa. Atiku did not win any state in the zone, unlike in 2019 when he got Plateau and Benue.
Atiku won the north-east, his home zone, claiming all but Borno, even leading PDP to victory in Yobe for what should be the first time since 1999. Tinubu won only Borno, where his running mate hails from. Also noteworthy is that Tinubu came first in 12 states and second in 19 states. He came third only in five states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
Although Atiku also came first in 12 states, he came second in only 15 states and third in 9 states plus the FCT. Tinubu got 25 percent in 30 states, while Atiku did in 21 states and FCT and Obi managed it in only 16 plus FCT.
The constitution requires the overall winner to have scored at 25 percent in at least 24 states and FCT, and Tinubu’s failure to secure 25 percent in the federal capital is one of the focuses of the election petition by his opponents.
The major calculation in Atiku’s camp was that being the strongest northerner on the ballot, he was going to sweep the northern states to make up for the loss of the south-east and south-south to Obi. It did not seem to have worked. Although Atiku won 9 of the 19 northern states, his total haul of 4.8 million votes fell short of Tinubu’s 5.3 million. That means Tinubu’s 7 states gave him more votes. Obi scored four million to lead in the south, claiming 9 states while Tinubu’s 3.2 million votes from five states placed him on the second slot. Atiku won in three states, netting 1.75 million votes.
Meanwhile it was learnt that if the majority of voters in the north had not backed Tinubu and instead supported Atiku, the PDP candidate would have won the highest votes without the required 25 percent spread.
Speaking with an APC Chieftain, Igwe Dimba, he noted Atiku and Obi lost fair and square. Narrating, he said: “In simple mathematical terms, had Atiku and Obi who ran on a single ticket of the PDP in 2019 and polled 11,262,978 votes or 41.22 percent have not allowed ambitions to tear them apart, they would have easily won the 2023 presidential poll. Their separate votes of 6,984,520 and 6,101,533 on their political party platforms of the PDP and LP respectively would have collectively yielded a total of 13,086,103; a handsome incontrovertible number which would have comfortably given them an unquestionable electoral victory.”
He added: ‘Unable to stick together to confront the ruling party whose Atiku and Obi attracted to themselves a well-known misfortune and traditional bogey of opposition parties, who almost all the time, fall when divided.’’
Another political pundit stated, “Even Atiku and Obi at a point entertained some illusions that either of them could be adopted by the powerful clique, who in desperation, were believed to be behind the toxic and vindictive naira design, ostensibly designed to make the ruling party candidate stumble and fall. In the face of the massive dislocation of lives of some Nigerians, arising from the currency design, Obi and Atiku stayed ambivalent and probably hoping to profit from the goodwill of those that instigated the naira design mayhem, while only the ruling party and its candidates stood in firm opposition to the measure.’’
He further stated: ‘Plainly speaking, had Atik and Obi managed to hold together and hold in check, their respective ambitions that tore them apart, both the geo-political and ethno-religious sentiments prevailing in the country were overwhelming on their side. The South-East which has always been the traditional base of the PDP dramatically went to the LP. Obi and his LP dutifully harvested the widely shared sentiment in the region of “our turn.”
A-Z magazine could recall that in 2013, the APC was created after merging with Congress for Progressive Change, (CPC) Action Congress of Nigeria (CPC) a faction of the PDP, the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and eventually won the 2015 presidential poll which produced President Muhammadu Buhari, who had previously lost two elections. Despite not being powered by social media activism; the CPC was even a more formidable hurricane.
Without a credible political interlocutor in the South or more specifically, the South-West, the CPC failed to make any inroad to other parts of the country, except the North. In the 2011 presidential poll, Buhari of the CPC polled 12,214,853 votes or 31.97 per cent of the total votes and still fell short of the 22,495,187 votes that gave the candidate of the ruling PDP, Jonathan Goodluck victory. When the next
Governorship and state assembly polls were held later, the CPC managed to win only one state, Nasarawa in North-Central.
In a similar political diminutive vision, the LP presidential candidate chose a running mate, a northern entrepreneur with little or no grass-root political appeal and who even lost his polling unit. As Buhari had no credible political interlocutor to the South in 2011, Obi’s electoral hurricane simply hit a brick wall going northwards.
For the PDP, it let pass its finest political and electoral hour. It only sacked its former National Chairman, Iyorchia Ayu, after it had lost the election, when it would have approached the election as united party, accepted demands of its dissident five governors, who not only distracted the party but also undermined it from within.
Tinubu’s camp has openly admitted that, had the splinter Atiku, Obi and Kwankwaso, joined forces as they did four years earlier in 2019; winning for the APC would have been an uphill task, if not an outright impossibility.
Although, two (PDP, LP) out of the four major contending parties have approached the Presidential Election Tribunal contending that INEC erred by declaring Tinubu winner of the presidential election.
As at the time of filing in this report the case was still before the tribunal.
