President Muhammadu Buhari has won his re-election bid as he polled 15,191,847 votes to defeat his closest rival, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party in the presidential poll conducted on February 23.
Atiku polled 11,262,978 to lose the election with a margin of 3,928,869 votes.
This is according to the Independent National Electoral Commission’s collated figure of votes from all the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory announced by the INEC Chairman, Prof Mahmud Yakubu on Wednesday morning.
The President has met all the requirements the constitution requires a candidate to meet before such could be declared the winner.
According to the constitution, a presidential candidate must have nothing less than 25 per cent of votes cast in at least two-thirds or 24 states of the federation. The candidate should also have majority votes in the election.
With the figure released by INEC at the national collation centre in Abuja on Wednesday morning, the incumbent President has more than 25 per cent of the election in over 24 states.
He also defeated his closest rival with 3,928,869 votes.
Atiku also had 25 per cent of the total votes cast in over 24 states but lost the poll when the simple majority rule condition is applied.
While President Buhari won in 19 states, Atiku won in 17 states and the FCT.
The states Buhari won are Bauchi, Borno, Ekiti, Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Kogi, Kwara, Lagos, Nasarawa, Niger, Ogun, Osun, Sokoto, Yobe and Zamfara.
Atiku won in Abia, Adamawa, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Bayelsa, Benue, Cross River, Delta, Ebonyi, Edo, Enugu, Imo, Ondo, Oyo, Plateau, Rivers, Taraba and the FCT.
INEC had started the collation of the results on Monday with the declaration of results from 11 states and the FCT, during which Buhari won seven states leaving Atiku with four and the FCT
The collation of results for the 2019 Presidential election continued on Tuesday with Niger State where Buhari with 612, 371 votes beat Atiku who scored 218, 052.
There are 2,375,568 registered voters across the 15 Local Government Areas of the state and 911,964 accredited voters.
The state recorded a total vote cast of 896,976 and 851,937 valid votes. 45 votes were rejected while 71,200 were cancelled.
In Jigawa State, President Buhari scored 794,738 votes against Atiku’s 289,895 votes.
Jigawa with 27 LGAs, has 2 ,104, 889 registered voter population of which 1,171,801 were accredited to vote. However, 1,149,922 of this number voted in the election in the state.
The recorded valid votes for Jigawa is 1,106,244 while 43, 678 votes were rejected.
Kaduna State also went to Buhari with 993,445 votes as against PDP’s 640, 612 votes.
Atiku fought back in Anambra State with 524,738 votes as against the APC’s 33,298 votes.
