The Nigerian ruling party’s candidate retained the governorship of the nation’s commercial hub in a violence-marred election.
(Bloomberg) — The Nigerian ruling party’s candidate retained the governorship of the nation’s commercial hub in a violence-marred election.
Babajide Sanwo-Olu from the All Progressives Congress won a second and final four-year term by garnering 726,134 of the 1.17 million votes cast in Lagos on March 18, results declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission on Monday show. He also obtained the backing of a quarter of the electorate in at least two-thirds of the state’s local government areas — a constitutional requirement to be declared the winner.
The Labour Party’s Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour was the runner up with 312,329 votes, while Abdul-Azeez Adediran of the Peoples Democratic Party finished third with 62,449 votes. A number of people in opposition strongholds were beaten up by gangs of thugs and prevented from voting.
Sanwo-Olu, is a close ally of President-Elect Bola Tinubu who won a national vote on Feb. 25. He has pledged to improve the state’s infrastructure, including completing two intra-city railway lines, in his second term. Several major international oil companies, least 25 banks and the stock exchange are all based in Lagos, which has an erratic power supply and badly congested roads.
Read more: Tinubu Prevails in Messy Nigerian Election: Next Africa Special
Gubernatorial elections were also held in 27 other states over the weekend and the results are still coming in. Balloting was initially scheduled for March 11, but was delayed by a week because the electoral commission said it needed more time to reconfigure electronic voter identification devices.
(Updates with details of vote from fourth paragraph. An earlier version of this story corrected the spelling of the governor’s name.)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.