Nigeria 2023 election: All you need to know
There are 93.4 million eligible voters for February 25 polls, the sixth since Nigeria’s return to democracy in 1999.
On February 25, Nigerians will go to the polls to elect President Muhammadu Buhari’s replacement as he is serving out the second of his constitutionally permitted two four-year terms.
Eighteen candidates are jostling to succeed him as leader of Africa’s biggest economy.
Top contenders include Bola Tinubu, a two-term former governor of Lagos and a major stalwart of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) party as well as the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) Atiku Abubakar, a former vice president who is gunning for the position a record sixth time.
Also in the race are the Labour Party’s (LP) Peter Obi, a two-time former governor of Anambra, and Rabiu Kwankwaso, ex-defence minister and former governor of the northern hub Kano, on the ticket of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP).
Who are the main candidates?
Atiku Abubakar
The PDP remains Nigeria’s key opposition and Abubakar, a veteran who is on his sixth attempt to be president, is hoping to clinch the presidency and return the party, which was at the helm of affairs from 1999 to 2015, to power.
He has hinged his campaign on unifying what remains a divided country and lifting Nigeria’s economy, which has suffered two recessions in four years, out of the doldrums.
In Nigeria, which is split almost evenly between Christians and Muslims, there is a gentlemanly agreement between the main parties to share power between north and south, and Christians and Muslims. The outgoing Buhari is a northern Muslim.
Abubakar, like Buhari, is a northern Muslim – and ethnic Fulani – from the northeast. He has selected Ifeanyi Okowa, the outgoing governor of Delta State in the south and Christian, as his running mate. Read More…
