Nigeria’s ruling party candidate Bola Tinubu, 70, is the Nigeria’s President elect, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared on Wednesday.

Mr. Tinubu won the presidency of the Africa’s most populous democracy after a highly disputed election.

According to official results, Tinubu, of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) party, garnered 8.8 million votes against 6.9 million for opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate Atiku Abubakar and Labour Party’s Peter Obi, who had 6.1 million.

The president-elect, also referred to as “Jagaban”,  was declared winner of the election by INEC chairman Mahmood Yakubu in the early hours of Wednesday at the National Collation Centre in Abuja.

 Mr Tinubu, a former governor of Lagos state from 1999 to 2007, garnered 8,805,420 votes.

 Mr Abubakar, who served as vice president from 1999 to 2007, got 6,984,290 votes while 62-year-old Obi, a former governor of Anambra got 6,093,962 votes, and 65-year-old Rabiu Kwankwaso of New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) polled 1,496,671 votes.

The APC candidate scored the constitutionally required majority votes, and also secured the second requirement of 25 percent of the votes in 25 states (two-thirds of Nigeria’s 36 states and Abuja), as required by Section 134 of the Constitution.

Constitutional threshold 

According to the Constitution, “a candidate for an election to the office of the President shall be deemed to have been duly elected, where, there being only two candidates for the election;

 “(a) he has the majority of votes cast at the election; and

 “(b) he has not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in each of at least two-thirds of all the States in the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.”

ALSO READ: Date for reburial of Thomas Sankara, comrades announced