Former Lagos Governor Paula Tinubu won the ruling party’s nomination to run in the 2023 presidential elections with 1,271 votes.
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Former Lagos Governor Paula Tinubu
Former Lagos governor Bula Tinubu won the ruling party’s nomination for the 2023 presidential election on Wednesday, facing another veteran of Nigerian politics, Atiq Abubakar, who won the nomination from the opposition People’s Democratic Party.
Tinubu got 1,271 votes after counting the ballot papers of about 2,300 party delegates in the capital, Abuja, and this reflects his huge influence in Nigeria.
Nigeria’s ruling party, the All Progressives Congress, picks former Lagos State governor Bola Tinubu as its candidate to run for president in elections scheduled for February 2023 pic.twitter.com/FGDb4rpmy3
— TRT World Now (@TRTWorldNow) June 8, 2022
In this context, the official of the primary elections in the All Progressives Congress party, which took place in the capital Abuja, Atiq Bagudo, said: “Bula Ahmed Tinubu has been announced as a presidential candidate for our party in the upcoming elections in 2023.”
Voters are scheduled to go to the polls on February 25, 2023, to elect a president, with President Muhammadu Buhari stepping down, whose second term ends next year, as he is not entitled to run for a third term according to the constitution.
Under an informal agreement between the political elites, It was decided to rotate the presidency periodically between the candidates of the north and southAnd after Buhari, who comes from the north, held the presidency for eight years, there is almost agreement that the next president should be a southerner.
The cyclical mechanism at the level of the national government is a balancing factor in a country that is roughly divided between the Christian-majority south and the Muslim-majority north.
Since the country’s return in 1999 to civilian rule, Nigeria has held general elections six times, often marred by accusations of fraud, logistical difficulties, acts of violence, and challenges to the results.
In 2019, when Buhari was elected president for a new term, the Independent National Elections Committee was criticized for delaying the due date by a week, and Abu Bakr challenging the election result in court.
Buhari is 79 years old, and while his second term is nearing completion, Nigeria is facing difficulties in putting an end to the rebellion of armed groups that has been witnessing for more than a decade in the northeast of the country, and a wave of gang violence in the northwest of the country.