Irish Examiner view: Big job ahead for new president Tinubu

Nigeria presidential election result

President-Elect Bola Tinubu, center, displays his certificate, accompanied by his wife Oluremi Tinubu, right, and chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Mahmood Yakubu, left, at a ceremony in Abuja, Nigeria Wednesday, March 1, 2023. Election officials declared Tinubu the winner of Nigeria's presidential election Wednesday, keeping the ruling party in power in Africa's most populous nation. Picture: Ben Curtis/AP

Many Nigerians had hoped the country’s most competitive presidential election in decades would produce a surprise — something or someone who would break the country’s seemingly never-ending struggle with economic turmoil, corruption and the endless violences that comes with it.

That ambition was blunted with the announcement by the Independent Nigerian Election committee (Inec) that the ruling All Progressives Congress party candidate, the 70-year-old Bola Tinubu, had beaten off the challenges of rivals, former vice-president Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party and Labour’s Peter Obi.