Obi defeats Tinubu in Lagos in major election upset

Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, has won the presidential election in Lagos state.

Obi narrowly defeated Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress in a win seen as a major upset in the polls. Tinubu governed Lagos from 1999 to 2007 and since then continued to wield immense political influence in the southwest state.

In the last 24 years, no other political except the one he supported won presidential elections.

Obi won with 582,454 while Tinubu received 572,606 votes in all the 20 local government areas, according to provisional results announced Monday.

Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party came third with 75,750 votes while Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) scored 8,442.

Officially, Lagos has the largest number of voters in the country with 6,942,885. But Inec put the number of accredited voters on Saturday at 1,347,152, and total valid votes cast at 1,271,451.

For an election seen as witnessing a large turnout mainly as a result of young people who got involved, the difference between the number of accredited and registered voters seemed too high.

The official results will be announced by Inec at its headquarters in Abuja.