Nigeria's new president-elect defends election

Nigeria's new president-elect, Bola Tinubu, defended the integrity of the national election that he won and called for citizens to unite around him after a bitter dispute over results has been shattered by opposition parties.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said Tinubu won 8.79 million votes in the last weekend, ahead of Atiku Abubakar's 6.98 million votes.

Peter Obi, an outsider popular with younger and more educated urban voters, won 6.1 million votes.

A Nigerian candidate can win a presidential election by getting more votes than their rivals, provided they have 25 percent of the vote in at least two-thirds of the 36 states and the federal capital Abuja.

I am very happy I have been elected the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Tinubu said. I hereby accept it. The election in Nigeria was intended to be the most open and fair competition in the nation's history. The electoral process, however, encountered difficulties, due to new technology that did not function well and appeared to overwhelm Nigeria's notoriously inadequate communication network.

Most units were unable to upload results from each polling unit to its website in real time, undermining confidence in the process. The numbers haven't been released, but thousands have been added to the site.

The main opposition parties, Atiku and Obi, have rejected the results as fraudulent.

I comment INEC for running a credible election, no matter what anybody says, Tinubu said on condition of anonymity. The lapses that were reported were relatively few in number and were immaterial to the final outcome of the election. Tinubu now faces a wide range of national problems, such as Islamist insurgencies in the northeast, armed attacks, killings and kidnappings, conflict between livestock herders and farmers, cash, fuel and power shortages, and deeply entrenched corruption.