Nigerian Election 2023 and Bola Tinubu’s Victory: What to Know

Bola Tinubu, a perennial political kingmaker in Nigeria’s politics, was declared the winner of the presidential election on Wednesday after a tight race marred by accusations of vote rigging and the lowest turnout ever recorded in a presidential contest in the country.

Nigeria is home to about 220 million people, and what happens there reverberates across Africa and the globe. More than 87 million people were eligible to vote, the election commission said — the most ever.

The Giant of Africa, as Nigeria is known, is at an inflection point. During nearly eight years of rule by an ailing president, Muhammadu Buhari — a military dictator turned reformed democrat — the country has lurched from one economic shock to the next. Mr. Buhari has reached his two-term limit and did not run for re-election. Over 60 percent of the population lives in poverty, while security crises — including kidnapping, terrorism, militancy in oil-rich areas and clashes between herders and farmers — have multiplied.

Final results showed Mr. Tinubu winning the election with 8.7 million votes, or about 36 percent of the vote, avoiding a runoff. Atiku Abubakar of the main opposition People’s Democratic Party got 6.9 million votes, and Peter Obi took 6.1 million. Under Nigerian law, to win, a candidate must win the most votes, as well as at least 25 percent of the vote in two-thirds of the nation’s 36 states.

Mr. Obi, a surprise third-party candidate popular among young Nigerians, narrowly won the race in Lagos State, home to the country’s largest city, in a blow to Mr. Tinubu.

The slow uploading of results on the website of the electoral commission has raised concerns that ballot rigging could once again tarnish an election. The voter turnout this year dropped to 27 percent, from 35 percent in 2019.

On Tuesday, Mr. Obi’s Labour Party and the Peoples Democratic Party, led by Mr. Abubakar, called for the election to be canceled and rerun, citing vote rigging. As of Wednesday morning, they had not reacted to the final results.

In recent weeks, shortages of fuel and cash — the money because of a rushed currency redesign — have caused widespread suffering. Even people with money in the bank cannot access it, and many are unable to buy food or pay for necessities. Protests in some cities have turned violent.

Many analysts said that the sudden currency redesign had been intended to stop politicians from hoarding cash to buy votes. On Friday, the Nigerian police announced that they had arrested an opposition party legislator in southern Nigeria with nearly $500,000 in cash in his car and a list of intended recipients for the bills.

Not since the rebirth of Nigeria’s democracy in 1999 had the country faced an election as nail-biting — and as wide open — as this one.

Who were the main candidates?

There was Mr. Tinubu, 70, Nigeria’s president-elect, who as the candidate of the governing All Progressives Congress had serious political machinery behind him. Mr. Tinubu, a canny, multimillionaire former governor of Lagos, Nigeria’s biggest city, is a Muslim from the southwest and boasts that he brought Mr. Buhari to power. His catchphrase, “Emi lo kan” — Yoruba for “It’s my turn” — speaks to his record as a kingmaker in Nigerian politics, but alienates many young voters.

Mr. Abubakar, a former vice president and multimillionaire businessman, was the candidate of the People’s Democratic Party, or P.D.P. Mr. Abubakar, 76, has run for the presidency five times since 1993, and this year may have been his last shot. A Muslim from the north, he hoped to pick up far more votes there than he has in the past, especially as he did not have to run against his old nemesis, Mr. Buhari, who had an ardent northern following.

The surprise candidate was Mr. Obi, 61. Hailed as a savior by a large chunk of Nigeria’s digitally savvy youth, Mr. Obi — a Christian and former governor from the southeast who hitched his wagon to the lesser-known Labour Party — threw this election open. His fans — mostly young, southern Nigerians walloped by economic hardship, joblessness and insecurity — call themselves the Obidients.

Those three were the leading contenders among the 18 candidates in all.

What did pre-election polling show (or not show)?

Several polls taken before election day put Mr. Obi ahead of his rivals — some by a wide margin. But what many of the surveys had in common was that a large proportion of people polled refused to say who they would vote for or said that they were undecided.

One poll, by the data and intelligence company Stears, tried to solve this problem by making an informed guess about which way the “silent voters” would cast their ballots based on their profiles and how they responded to other questions.

Stears found that if, as in 2019, few people showed up at the polls, Mr. Tinubu would be by far the more likely winner, which is eventually what happened. Despite close results, the turnout was lower than the 2019 election.

What were the top issues?

Nearly 90 percent of Nigerians say they believe that the country is going in the wrong direction, according to a recent survey by Afrobarometer — by far the worst perception it has ever recorded in Nigeria. For many, this election seemed like a last-ditch chance to rescue the country.

A nation bursting with entrepreneurs and creative talent, Nigeria is held back by rampant insecurity, widespread unemployment, persistent corruption and a stagnating economy, which together mean that simply surviving can be a major struggle. Young, middle-class Nigerians trying to escape this life are leaving the country in droves.

What was different about this ballot?

Recent changes in the voting system — using biometric data to ensure voters’ identities and sending results electronically rather than manually — were put in place to prevent the tampering and vote rigging that have undermined previous elections.

There was no incumbent on the ballot, and for the first time in decades, there were major candidates from each of Nigeria’s three main ethnic groups: Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa-Fulani.

All the usual, if unofficial, rules of Nigerian elections were blown apart:

• It’s a battle between the two established parties — Mr. Obi broke this one when he lost the P.D.P. ticket to Mr. Abubakar but insisted on running anyway, and joined another party.

• The presidency is supposed to alternate between the north and the south, and so parties should field candidates accordingly — Mr. Buhari is a northerner, so Mr. Abubakar was expected to let a southerner helm his party. But he did not. (Mr. Tinubu is from the southwest.)

• There should be a Muslim and a Christian on the ticket — Mr. Tinubu, a Muslim, bulldozed through this rule by picking a Muslim from the northeast as his running mate.

What did a candidate need to win?

A plurality, plus 25 percent of the vote in two-thirds of the nation’s 36 states. If no candidate achieves this, the election goes to a runoff — which has not happened since democracy returned.

Turnout was extremely low in 2019 — around 35 percent of registered voters cast a ballot in that election, mostly because of insecurity, logistical problems and apathy. More than 12 million new voters registered this year, according to the electoral commission, most of them young people, but that wasn’t enough to avoid an even lower voter turnout. Of the 87 million allowed to cast a ballot, fewer than 25 million did.