By Oluwatobi Adeniji
The February 25 presidential election was held across the 774 local government areas across the country, with minimal challenges. For the first time, a new law known as the Electoral Act 2022 was put to the test.
Before balloting, Nigerians were confident in the ability of the Independent National Electoral Commission to get it right given the robust provisions in the Act. Perhaps, the biggest provision of the Act was the direct transmission of election results to the IReV portal; an initiative many Nigerians believed would drastically reduce election rigging and manipulation.
Although this provision was largely complied with at the National Assembly, governorship, and state Assemblies’ elections, the same could not be said of the presidential election.At the end of balloting, INEC declared Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress the winner of the election and subsequently returned him as President and commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, Federal Republic of Nigeria.
The former Lagos State Governor, according to INEC secured a total of 8,794,726 votes, representing 37 per cent of total votes cast to beat Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party who got 6,984,520 votes or 29 per cent of votes cast, and Peter Obi of the Labour Party who garnered 6,101,533 or 25 per cent of votes cast, to second and third place finish respectively.
Not only did Atiku and Obi reject the declaration of Tinubu as the winner of the election, but they fought their way up to the Supreme Court, which affirmed the election as meeting the required standards, thus dismissing their applications as lacking in merit.
Tinubu’s election exposed many Pentecostal preachers in the land, who had predicted an outright victory for Obi whose ‘Obidient’ Movement, peopled by young netizens, took control of the social media, pledging their support in cash and kind to the realisation of the political aspiration of the former Anambra State governor.