Nigeria Election: Obi Wins Lagos State; Tinubu Leads Overall

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Facts

• Nigeria's Labor Party presidential candidate Peter Obi has won a narrow victory in the commercial hub of Lagos state — defeating the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) party's Bola Tinubu by less than 10K votes, according to electoral commission data released on Monday.¹
• This comes as a surprising result as the APC contender was expected to easily win the state, which is his political stronghold. Tinubu is a former governor of Lagos and is an influential politician in the region.²
• The governing party, however, managed to win control of more local authorities in Lagos. The APC is leading both the presidential and parliamentary races, which remain wide open as only a fraction of the votes cast by up to 87M potentially eligible voters has been collated since Saturday.³
• As of Monday afternoon, Tinubu has a roughly 12-point nationwide lead over the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate Atiku Abubakar, with Obi trailing by more than 26 percentage points. Some 9M votes have been counted so far.⁴
• If no candidate obtains at least 25% of the votes in two-thirds of the country's states, the top two candidates will face a runoff election within the three following weeks. It's estimated that it will take five days to count and report the results.⁵
• The main opposition PDP and the Labor Party have walked out of the election center in Abuja — alleging that there is a lack of transparency with the new electronic voting system, which is being used for the first time in Nigeria's national elections.⁶

Sources: ¹Al Jazeera, ²CNN, ³Guardian, ⁴Stears elections, ⁵Time and ⁶BBC News.

Narratives

• Narrative A, as provided by Economist. Despite living under democratic rule since 1999, this is the first time that Nigerians could cast their votes for a candidate that offers hope for change as the country faces economic and security challenges. Obi can unite the country as he is campaigning on competence instead of on divisive ethnic or religious lines. He knows the problems of Nigeria more than anyone else.
• Narrative B, as provided by Jacobin. While this election may promote youth engagement in politics and lead to a break in the hegemony of Nigeria's two establishment parties, very little will change. Even if Obi enters into office parliament is likely to remain under the control of those political forces. In addition, his market-oriented reforms can only deepen the country's social, economic, and security crises.

Predictions