President Muhammadu Buhari has won the 2019 presidential election, polling 15,191,847 votes to defeat his closest rival, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, who scored 11,262,978 votes.
He defeated 73 other candidates to emerge winner. Buhari defeated his closest challenger, Atiku, by a wide magin votes.
Buhari was declared winner and returned as President-elect at about 4.30am on Wednesday by the National Chairman of the National Independent Electoral Commission, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, who is also the national returning officer for the election.
To emerge winner, Buhari won the highest number of votes in Kano, Kaduna, Katsina, Jigawa, Yobe, Borno, Bauchi, Gombe, Nasarawa, Niger, Ogun, Osun, Ekiti, Lagos, Kogi, Kwara, Kebbi, Sokoto and Zamfara States.
Alhaji Atiku won in 17 states and the FCT. The states won by Atiku are Adamawa, Taraba, Plateau, Oyo, Ondo, Imo, Enugu, Edo, Ebonyi, Benue, Anambra, Adamawa, Abia, Cross River, Rivers, Delta, Bayelsa and Akwa Ibom.
A geopolitical analysis of the states won by Buhari shows that he clinched all the seven states in the Northwest, four in the Southwest, four in Northeast, and four in North central.
On the other hand, Atiku won all the five Southeast states, all the six South South states, two in Southwest, two in North Central, and two in Northeast.
President Buhari will be the second president to be reelected since the return of democracy in 1999. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, elected on the platform of the PDP in 1999, was reelected in 2003. His successor, Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua, who was elected in 2007, did not complete his first term as he died in office. Yar’Adua’s former deputy, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, who was sworn into office in 2010, failed in his bid to secure reelection in 2015.
