Bola Tinubu, Nigeria’s political kingmaker, wins a flawed election

AFTER A CHAOTICALLYPDPAPC organised vote and messy count, , the candidate of Nigeria’s incumbent ruling party, has been declared the winner of the closest presidential election in decades. Mr Tinubu, a 70-year-old former governor of Lagos and longtime kingmaker in Nigerian politics, took 37% of the vote, the electoral commission said on March 1st. This placed him ahead of Atiku Abubakar (29%), a tycoon standing for the People’s Democratic Party (), the main opposition, and Peter Obi (25%), a wildcard third-party candidate representing the Labour Party.Mr Tinubu’s victory confounded most pollsters, who had put in the race to lead Africa’s biggest economy and most populous country. (Though some pundits questioned the predictive power of several polls because large numbers of respondents had declined to say whom they would vote for.) It also extends the rule of the All Progressives Congress () party, which has been in power since 2015. During this time Nigerians on average have grown poorer, while violence, separatism and insecurity have risen. The election result rattled financial markets—Nigeria’s international bonds fell—over concerns that the opposition parties’ claims of vote-rigging could cause instability.