Tinubu Maintains Lead as INEC Gets Set to Announce Winner of 2023 Presidential Election

Pat Stevens/

Candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, has maintained his firm lead after the Independent National Electoral Commission rounded off the collation of results of Saturday’s presidential election around 1.15am today.

INEC Chairman, Prof Mahmud Yakubu, announced the completion of the collation exercise at the National Collation Centre in Abuja.

Yakubu said the next stage involved entering the results on a state-by-state basis in Form EC8DA, after which the final result would be entered in Form EC8E and a winner declared and returned as elected.

The INEC boss, who displayed the sealed copies of the two forms to be used for the exercises, said the two final stages would be done in the full glare of everyone in attendance.

Yakubu said the final exercises, which has commenced as at press time, will take a few minutes to conclude.

After the collation of results from the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Tinubu polled 8,805,655 votes.

He is followed by the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, who polled 6,984,520. In third position is the Labour Party candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, who polled 6,101,533.

Coming in a distant fourth is the candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party, Alhaji Rabiu Kwankwaso, who polled 1,496,687.

It noteworthy that the first three candidates won 12 states each.

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