Erstwhile Head of State, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari, was, yesterday, returned to power in a historic election that saw the first defeat of an incumbent president in the history of democratic rule in post-colonial Nigeria.
President Goodluck Jonathan, candidate of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, hours later conceded defeat and put a call to Buhari at about 5.15 p.m. with only Borno State yet to return its results. At that time, Buhari was already leading by 14,932,385 to the 12,638,310 votes scored by Jonathan.
Buhari, the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, defeated President Goodluck Jonathan, the flag bearer of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP by 15,405,928 votes to 12,663,950 votes, according to final results declared by the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Professor Attahiru Jega.
The triumph of the 72-year-old Buhari followed sweeping victories in all but one of the six South-West states and all but two of the North’s 19 states. The endorsement of Buhari was, however, tempered in Jonathan’s South-South and the South-East states where the President won massively.
With the eyes of the world focused on Nigeria after the Saturday presidential and National Assembly elections, Jonathan put a foot in a personal march towards international statesmanship when he conceded victory to Buhari once the trend of the results put Buhari in an unassailable lead yesterday evening.
Shortly after the President made the call, he received a high powered delegation of statesmen led by a former head of state, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, who came to congratulate him on his worthy example.
The routing of the PDP also went beyond its hold of the presidency as the party was, according to trend, also on its way to losing control of the National Assembly. The party which had since 1999 always won control of the National Assembly in every National Assembly election lost control of the Senate and the House of Representatives to the APC.
Buhari won in 22 of the 36 states and achieved 25 per cent of the votes in another three states, all of them in the North and the South-West. The outgoing president won in all the South-East, South-South states and also picked Ekiti in the South-West and Taraba and Plateau in the North.
Buhari in a terse statement issued shortly after, however, called for restraint from party supporters, saying anyone celebrating with him would not be involved in the wild celebration that included the harassment of opponents.
“He or she is not with me, whoever does that,” Buhari curtly said.
“I thank you all for turning out en-masse for the March 28 General Elections. -Vanguard.
NA GOD DO AM FOR US. LETS RETURN ALL THE GLORY TO HIM