Nigerian presidential election, 1979

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Presidential elections were held in Nigeria for the first time on 11 August 1979. The result was a victory for Shehu Shagari, whose National Party of Nigeria had won the parliamentary elections in July.^[1]

Results

National results

Candidate	Party	Votes	%
Shehu Shagari	National Party of Nigeria	5,668,857	33.77
Obafemi Awolowo	Unity Party of Nigeria	4,916,651	29.18
Nnamdi Azikiwe	Nigerian People's Party	2,822,523	16.75
Aminu Kano	People's Redemption Party	1,732,113	10.28
Waziri Ibrahim	Greater Nigerian People's Party	1,686,489	10.02
Total		16,846,633	100

Results by state

State	Ibrahim %	Awolowo %	Shagari %	Kano %	Azikiwe %
Anambra	1.67	0.75	13.50	1.20	82.88
Bauchi	16.44	3.00	62.48	14.34	4.74
Bendel	1.20	53.20	36.20	0.70	8.60
Benue	7.97	2.57	76.38	1.35	11.77
Borno	54.04	3.35	34.71	6.52	1.35
Cross River	15.14	11.76	64.40	1.01	7.66
Gongola	34.09	21.67	35.52	4.34	4.35
Imo	3.00	0.64	8.80	0.59	84.69
Kaduna	14.00	7.00	43.00	31.00	5.00
Kano	1.54	1.23	19.94	76.41	0.91
Kwara	5.71	37.48	53.62	0.67	0.52
Lagos	0.48	82.30	7.18	0.47	9.57
Niger	16.60	3.67	74.88	3.77	1.11
Ogun	0.53	92.61	6.23	0.31	0.32
Ondo	0.26	94.50	4.19	0.18	0.86
Oyo	0.57	85.78	12.75	0.32	0.55
Plateau	6.82	5.29	34.72	3.98	49.70
Rivers	2.18	10.33	72.65	0.46	14.35
Sokoto	26.61	2.52	66.58	3.33	0.92

Source: The Nigerian 1979 Elections^[2]

Challenge to results

Main article: Awolowo v Shagari case

Under the 1979 Nigerian Constitution, in order to be elected President on the first ballot a candidate needed to receive both the most votes nationwide and at least 25% of the vote in two-thirds of the states. However, at the time of the election, Nigeria had nineteen states, two-thirds of which in exact figures is 12.66. A dispute thus ensued over whether Shehu Shagari had received the necessary threshold by winning 25% in twelve states and 19.9% in Kano State, which Shagari claimed was two-thirds of the required 25% threshold and represented the remaining 0.66 in the constitutional threshold. Obafemi Awolowo claimed that the threshold should be rounded up to thirteen states, which Shagari had not met. The Supreme Court of Nigeria ruled in favour of Shagari.^[3]

References

↑ Elections in Nigeria African Elections Database
↑ Oyediran, Oyeleye (1981). The Nigerian 1979 elections. Illupeju, Lagos: Macmillan Nigeria. ISBN 0333317858. |access-date= requires |url= (help)
↑ "Awolowo v. Shagari and Others". Journal of African Law. 23 (2): 175–182. 1979.

Elections in Nigeria

Presidential elections	1979 1983 1993 1999 2003 2007 2011 2015

House elections	1923 1928 1933 1938 1943 1947 1954 1959 1964 1979 1983 1992 1998 1999 2003 2007 2011 2015

Senate elections	1979 1983 1992 1998 1999 2003 2007 2011 2015

Regional elections	1951 1953 1954 1956−57 1960−61 1964 British Cameroons: 1959 1961

Local elections	1950 1953

Referendums	1959 1961

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