2023 Presidential: What the Numbers Actually Said

Nigeria's 2023 presidential election was settled by roughly 8.8 million votes out of 93.5 million registered voters. That is a turnout of around 27 percent, the lowest recorded figure for a presidential election in the Fourth Republic. The result that came out of that low-turnout contest was also the most fractured in Nigeria's democratic history.

INEC declared Bola Tinubu of the APC winner on 1 March 2023. The certified result placed him at 36.61 percent of the total vote, with three other candidates each collecting a share large enough that, in most electoral systems, would have forced a runoff.

A split that had no precedent

In every previous competitive presidential election under the Fourth Republic, the APC and PDP (or their predecessors) had commanded the field between them. In 2023, those two parties combined for only 65.7 percent. The remainder went to candidates running outside the established duopoly, with Peter Obi on the Labour Party ticket taking 25.4 percent.

Obi's result was the most significant performance by a third-party presidential candidate in Nigeria's recent history. The 6.1 million votes he collected came disproportionately from younger, urban voters and from the South-East geopolitical zone, where he carried all five states by wide margins. He also won the Federal Capital Territory and came first in Lagos (Tinubu's political home) by around 10,000 votes.

The geography of the result

Tinubu's path to the presidency ran through the North, not the South-West alone. While he swept most South-Western states, his winning margin nationally depended heavily on APC governors delivering votes from their states across the North-Central and parts of the North-West. Without those northern contributions, his lead over Atiku would have been within striking distance.

Atiku Abubakar, on the PDP ticket for the third time as presidential candidate, was competitive but could not replicate the north-wide dominance that had anchored his 2007 and 2019 campaigns. Kwankwaso's NNPP campaign was essentially a Kano phenomenon: he pulled nearly a million votes from that state alone, which left him nationally weak but regionally dominant enough to deny Atiku the northern bloc vote he needed.

Turnout: the bigger story

Approximately 24.9 million votes were cast against a registered electorate of 93.5 million, a 26.7 percent turnout and the lowest since the return to democracy in 1999. In 2019 it was 34.7 percent. The 8.8 million votes that won Tinubu the presidency were fewer than Buhari collected in 2015 (15.4 million) and 2019 (15.2 million).

A president elected on 8.8 million votes in a low-turnout environment has a narrower mandate than his predecessors. Any candidate who can pull back disengaged voters, particularly the large cohort of newly registered young Nigerians on the 2023 roll who did not end up voting, is competing on materially different ground in 2027.

Legal challenges and what came after

Both Atiku and Obi petitioned the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal. Both lost. Appeals to the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court were dismissed by October 2023, leaving Tinubu's result intact. The legal battles nonetheless produced extensive judicial examination of INEC's processes and the BVAS electronic result transmission system.

Every candidate who ran in 2023 has a profile on NGElections with their certified vote count, party affiliation, and where applicable their declared position on the 2027 race. The full presidential result is available on the 2023 Presidential election page.