No one expects a different outcome, with many seeing the APC presidential direct primary as nothing more than a charade designed to give legitimacy to an exercise whose outcome was determined long ago. Osifo is largely seen as nothing more than a willing and compliant actor in the whole theatrics.
On Sunday, President Bola Tinubu was announced as the winner of the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential primary, garnering 10.5 million votes across the 36 states of the Federation. His lone challenger, Stanley Osifo, in the election, polled 16,503 in the direct primary. The chairman of the party’s Presidential Electoral Committee and former Secretary to the Federal Government of Nigeria, Pius Anyim, who gave the breakdown of results, said the president beat Stanley Osifo, in all the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
No one expects a different outcome, with many seeing the APC presidential direct primary as nothing more than a charade designed to give legitimacy to an exercise whose outcome was determined long ago. Osifo is largely seen as nothing more than a willing and compliant actor in the whole theatrics.
Osifo may not be an influential or prominent figure in Nigeria’s politics but his participation in the APC presidential primary is not his first rodeo at trying to be the flagbearer of a political party in a presidential election. In 2O18, he joined the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and in 2O19, he attempted to contest in the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) presidential primaries. He bought the nomination form and canvassed delegates but was eventually blocked from taking part. And in 2O22, he joined the All Progressives Congress (APC) On April 28, Osifo paid N100 million for the APC presidential form to challenge President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
However, despite the fact that many expect Tinubu to emerge as the presidential candidate of the APC without a challenge, the votes the party claimed he polled in the primary election have raised eyebrows and are now the subject of controversy and intense public debate. To put things in context the votes garnered by Tinubu in the APC primary are more than the 8,794,726 votes he secured in the last general elections. His closest rival then, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) polled a total of 6,984,520 votes in the election while Peter Obi of the Labour Party came third with a total of 6,101,533 votes and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso of the NNPP came fourth with 1,496,687 votes.
Even in states where he performed poorly and where he recorded pitifully low votes in the last general election suddenly somehow produced a staggering number of votes during the primary.
A breakdown of the primary election results
1. Lagos: 814,988
2. Adamawa: 644,149
3. Kaduna: 618,914
4. Imo: 582,960
5. Kano: 500,852
6. Katsina: 467,003
7. Gombe: 450,517
8. Borno: 414,988
9. Delta: 407,646
10. Akwa Ibom: 389,197
11. Enugu: 383,382
12. Benue: 374,787
13. Plateau: 241,720
14. Bayelsa: 227,192
15. Ebonyi: 207,579
16. Jigawa: 206,520
17. Kogi: 197,370
18. Taraba: 183,698
19. Ondo: 181,996
20. Niger: 175,487
21. Abia: 161,005
22. Bauchi: 156,541
23. Ogun: 322,485
24. Zamfara: 321,579
25. Kwara: 310,990
26. Sokoto: 301,000
27. Kebbi: 292,972
28. Nasarawa: 285,436
29. Rivers: 280,082
30. Yobe: 253,804
31. Cross River: 113,911
32. Edo: 121,098
33. Oyo: 142,754
34. Osun: 100,888
35. Ekiti: 85,340
36. Anambra: 43,034
37. FCT: 36,103
In some of these states, President Tinubu, during the primary, got almost the same amount of total votes cast for the three frontrunners in the state# during the last presidential election.
In Imo state, Tinubu garnered 582,960 votes during the primary. Meanwhile, he secured 66,406 during the 2023 presidential election. In fact, the 582,960 votes declared for him in the state are more than the votes he, Atiku, Obi and Kwankwaso secured during the 2023 presidential poll which stood at 457,135.
Tinubu scored 414,988 in Borno State in the just-concluded primary election of the party. In the 2023 general elections, he secured only 252, 282. Which is almost two times what he scored then.
In Adamawa State, President Tinubu got 644,149 votes while he polled 104,833 votes in the general elections in 2023, which included all Nigerians. The total number of votes cast for the leading candidates in the 2023 presidential election in the state was 706,140. However, Tinubu managed to secure over 90% of the combined votes cast for himself, Atiku and Obi, during the primary.
In Gombe, for the primary election, he secured 450,517, but in the 2023 elections, he scored only 146,977 votes. The total votes cast for the three leading candidates in the 2023 presidential election are 492,260.
In Rivers State, in the 2023 general elections, Tinubu scored 231,591 votes but scored 280,082 votes last Saturday. In Ogun, the 2023 election results showed 341,554 votes while the just-concluded primary posted 322,485 votes
In Lagos, the 2023 election result showed that Tinubu polled 572,606 votes, but on Saturday, he secured 814,988 votes in the primaries, securing more than 60% of the total votes cast, 1,230,810, for the three leading candidates, which included him, during the election.
In Abia and Enugu during the primary, he secured 161,005 and 383,382 respectively but he was only able to poll 8,914 and 4,772 respectively in both states in the last presidential election.
In Ondo State, however, Tinubu scored 181, 966 votes in the APC 2026 primary election, but in the 2023 general election, he scored 361,944.
Political analysts and commentators and many Nigerians are questioning the authenticity and genuineness of these figures, arguing that they are not a product of an open, credible and transparent exercise but a reflection of a shoddy, poorly organised and fraudulent exercise whose outcome was settled long before its conduct. It is hard to fault the position of those who asserted that the primary election was a troubling charade as numerous videos of the headcount of party members during the primary corroborate their claim.
Many Nigerians, particularly those on the other side of the political divide, believe that the manner in which the APC presidential primary was conducted and its outcome, which they considered unrealistic and phantom, is a template the party plans to use in rigging the 2027 presidential election and a justification for the electoral malpractice.
Whatever the case is, it remains to be seen if the APC can replicate this performance in next year’s presidential election if it is free, fair and credible and devoid of shenanigans and fraud we witnessed during the primary election.
