President Bola Tinubu has won the All Progressives Congress presidential primary election in a commanding landslide, securing the party's nomination for the 2027 general election with nearly 11 million votes against a lone challenger.
Pius Anyim, Chairman of the APC Presidential Primary Election Committee, declared Tinubu the winner Friday after results were collated from all 36 states, 774 local government areas, and 8,809 wards across the country, making it one of the most expansive primary exercises in the party's history.
"Having satisfied the requirements of the APC constitution and guidelines, and scored the highest number of votes, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is hereby declared the winner of the primary election and is therefore nominated as the party's presidential candidate," Anyim announced to cheering party delegates at the event.
Of the 12,643,306 registered voters on the party's roll, 11,069,756 were accredited and 11,015,665 ultimately cast their ballots, a turnout rate of approximately 99.5 percent of accredited voters.
Tinubu polled 10,999,162 votes, representing 99.85 percent of all votes cast. His only challenger, Stanley Osifo, received 16,503 votes.
The margin left little ambiguity: Tinubu outpolled Osifo in every single state, including states where Osifo failed to record a single vote, among them Osun, FCT, Kogi, Delta, Ebonyi, Jigawa, Kebbi, Ondo, Yobe, Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Ekiti, Ogun, Sokoto, Cross River, Taraba, and Gombe.
Tinubu's strongest performances came from Lagos, his political home base, where he polled 814,988 votes to Osifo's 1,186; Adamawa, where he recorded 644,149 votes against Osifo's 195; and Kaduna, where he swept 618,914 votes while Osifo recorded none.
Other strong showings came from Imo (582,960), Kano (500,852), Gombe (450,517), Borno (414,988), Delta (407,646), Akwa Ibom (389,197), Enugu (383,382), Benue (374,787), Katsina (467,003), and Ogun (322,485).
Osifo's best performance came in Niger State, where he received 5,248 votes against Tinubu's 175,487, followed by Kano with 2,675, Bauchi with 2,650, and Abia with 1,007.
The primary, held May 23, 2026, positions Tinubu as the APC's standard-bearer heading into the 2027 general election, in which he will seek a second four-year term. His first term began in May 2023.
The exercise was conducted under the provisions of the Electoral Act and the APC constitution, with the committee chaired by Anyim, a former Senate President and former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, lending institutional weight to the process.
Other notable figures present at the declaration ceremony included Vice President Keshim Shettima, Governors from APC states, who acted as the state returning officers, the First Lady Olu-Remi Tinubu, Senator Ken Nnamani, Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba, among other party stalwarts.
With the ticket now officially secured, attention turns to the APC's campaign strategy and the broader opposition landscape ahead of the 2027 contest.
Comments
Add a comment