Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega have congratulated Bola Tinubu, Nigeria’s president-elect, on his victory in the keenly contested February 25 general election.

In a statement, Tunde Rahman, media aide to Mr. Tinubu said Diaz-Canel and Ortega’s congratulatory messages were conveyed in separate letters.

Rahman quoted the Cuban president as describing Tinubu’s victory as “a reaffirmation of the will to continue to strengthen the historic relations of friendship between the two countries”.

Nicaragua, in a message signed by Ortega and Rosario’s Murillo, the country’s vice-president, expressed its best wishes to Nigeria.

The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, declared Bola Tinubu, the candidate of Nigeria’s ruling party, APC, as the winner of February 25 presidential election.

Mr Tinubu defeated 17 other candidates who took part in the election as he scored a total of 8,794,726 votes, the highest of all the candidates.

He also scored over 25 per cent of the votes cast in 30 states, more than the 24 states constitutionally required.

Chief Bola Ahmed Tinubu is a Nigerian accountant and politician who is the president-elect of Nigeria. He served as governor of Lagos State from 1999 to 2007 and senator for Lagos West during the brief  Third Republic.

Bola Tinubu, the candidate of Nigeria’s ruling party, the All Progressives Congress, won the presidential election on February 25th, and will be sworn in as president on May 29th. The opposition has vowed to contest the result, citing what they claimed were irregularities.

Nigeria has an unusual electoral system in that the winning candidate needs to win a plurality of votes and also win at least 25% of votes in more than two‑thirds of Nigeria’s states. This means that Mr Tinubu won the election with just 36.6% of the popular vote.

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