Nigeria’s opposition presidential candidate Peter Obi has caused a huge upset by narrowly defeating the ruling party’s Bola Tinubu in his heartland of Lagos state, provisional results announced by state election officials show.
Mr Obi won 582,454 votes, compared to Mr Tinubu’s 572,606.
The official results will be announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (Inec) at its headquarters in the capital, Abuja.
Lagos is the commercial hub of Nigeria, and Mr Tiinubu was once its governor.
Obi’s win in Lagos was predicted
The surprise third-party candidate Peter Obi has won the largest number of votes in Lagos, the state with the most voters, according to results announced by state election officials.
The victory is significant as Bola Tinubu, the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), governed the state from 1999 to 2007.
However, Mr Obi had been predicted to win Lagos by a number of polls – it’s where many of his young, educated supporters are based.
There had been fears that some instances of election violence and some ballot-snatching might have affected his chances of winning. But those fears appear to have been unfounded.
Mr Obi won the state by a slim margin – just 10,000 votes.
The total number of voters is not yet known, but preliminary figures suggest turnout was lower than expected.
The result has not yet been confirmed and officially announced by the head of the electoral commission in Abuja.
Source: BBC
