At a news conference Tuesday afternoon, opposition figures alleged widespread technological problems, delays in poll openings on Election Day, violence and voter intimidation, and manipulation of results.
Pockets of protest, including in the capital, Abuja, emerged Tuesday, and political analysts warned it could spread. Leaders in the opposition and ruling parties urged calm.
Tinubu, 70, known as a kingmaker in Nigerian politics, received 36 percent of more than 24 million votes cast, according to results announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). He also received over 25 percent of the vote in more than two-thirds of Nigeria’s 36 states and Abuja, thus meeting both requirements to win Nigeria’s presidency.
Tinubu, who had the support of Buhari and a massive get-out-the-vote effort behind him, ran on the slogan “It’s my turn.” He benefited because the opposition was divided between Obi, 61, a former governor popular among the youth, and Abubakar, 76, on his sixth bid for the presidency.
Now, Obi’s and Abubakar’s campaigns have joined forces to call for a fresh election, saying that INEC’s poor performance overseeing the election led to a loss of confidence in the results. “This election was not free and was far from being fair or transparent,” Julius Abure, the Labour Party chairman, said at the news conference.
Analysts and international observers have also criticized INEC. Election observers from the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) said the election “fell well short of Nigerian citizens’ legitimate and reasonable expectations.”
Rotimi Oyekanmi, a spokesman for Nigeria’s electoral body, defended the process as “free, fair and credible,” dismissing calls for a rerun. Oyekanmi said in a statement that any concerns should be addressed in the court.
While analysts said it is not clear whether delays and vote discrepancies could have altered the election outcome, they said that such problems undermined the confidence of voters in Africa’s largest democracy. Many were already deeply frustrated with their government after years of spiraling economic and security crises.
“People definitely have a reason to ask questions, and INEC definitely has a lot of questions to answer,” said Tunde Ajileye, a partner at SBM Intelligence, a Lagos-based geopolitical intelligence consultancy.
He noted that INEC had failed on multiple fronts: Many of its officials arrived hours late to polls on Election Day and failed to make results available online as promised. “There is a huge disparity between the actual experience of people and the promise that INEC made as to how the election would go,” Ajileye said.
Matthew Page, an associate fellow with Chatham House’s Africa Program, said INEC, which is composed of civil servants and presidential political appointees, made mistakes both deliberate and unintentional.
“They raised the hopes about the election and its transparency, and then they dashed them,” Page said. “When the opposition says the process was broken, it’s hard to argue with them.”
Mucahid Durmaz, a senior analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, said, “Failure to oversee a credible and transparent process in the highly anticipated vote risks plunging the country into electoral chaos at a time when public discontentment towards the state institutions is already significantly high.”
The election marked the first time in Nigeria’s modern history that a third-party candidate posed a substantial challenge to the two candidates from Nigeria’s main political parties. In a sign of his support among young people in urban areas, Obi bested Tinubu in his home state of Lagos — a major blow for the man whose supporters call him the “Godfather of Lagos.”
But Obi, whose campaign had little infrastructure in vast swaths of the country, failed to make a dent in some of its more populous states in the north and southwest. And some supporters of Tinubu said they appreciated his decades of experience, including serving as the governor of Lagos, the commercial hub of Nigeria, from 1999 to 2007.
“Look at Lagos — all across the country, people bring their business here,” said Olatungi Salami, 48, who cast his vote for Tinubu in Lagos on Saturday. “And our country right now, the way we are, we need a messiah.”
Tinubu has faced corruption accusations, which he denies, and questions during the campaign about his health after fumbling his words during multiple appearances. Tinubu and his supporters have said there is no cause for concern. His campaign last year highlighted a video of Tinubu on an exercise bike to demonstrate his fitness.
At a polling station in Mushin, a working-class Lagos neighborhood, 35-year-old Kayode Coker said he decided to support Tinubu because “we need someone who understands the system.”
“It takes a thief to catch a thief,” the accountant said. Asked if the “thief” he referred to was Tinubu, Coker threw his hands in the air: “I mean … that’s what I’m saying.”
*This story has not been edited by The Infallible staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.
