Results
#1. What is the minimum spread of votes the winning candidate requires to avoid a run-off?
25% of the votes in 2/3 of the states
Whoever gets the most votes has to hit this threshold in order to avoid a run-off. Since 1999, no winning candidate has failed to meet this.
#2. There are more people named Ahmed than there are women running for president. True or False?
There’s only one woman running for president, Princess Chichi Ojei running for president on the little known Allied Peoples’ Movement (APM) platform.
#3. How many presidential tickets are on the ballot?
In the 2019 elections, there were 73 tickets on the ballots! This time around INEC was able to set criteria which whittled it down to 18.
#4. Buhari is running. True or False?
This is a bit of a trick question. While President Muhammadu Buhari isn’t running due to being term limited, there are two other Buharis on the ballot paper.
#5. What is the voting age in Nigeria?
The age was reduced to 18 in 1979 at the advent of the Second Republic, having been at 21 throughout all previous elections. This is also when women in northern states got the vote. There were several stipulations in colonial and post-independence elections, including having paid taxes in the year before the elections were held.
#6. You can run for president at any age. True or False?
False! You can run for president, vice president, or senator at 35 (used to be 40), governor at 30, House of Representative and State Assembly at 25.
#7. What is the minimum level of education required to run for president?
Only a school leaver’s certificate is required, although many of the candidates tend to highlight their university education. President Buhari, went straight to military college after leaving secondary school.
#8. How many living former presidents are there?
Yakubu Gowon, Ibrahim Babangida, Abdulsalam Abubakar, Olusegun Obasanjo, Goodluck Jonathan. All are in their 80s except Goodluck Jonathan.
#9. Which VP has not gone on to become president?
The correct answr is Yemi Osinbajo who hasn’t become President yet but he is running.
#10. A vice president of Nigeria has never gone on to become president. True or False?
Olusegun Obasanjo became a military president when General Murtala Muhammed was killed in a failed coup in 1975. Goodluck Jonathan became president in 2010 after Umaru Musa Yar’Adua died in office. He then won an election at the top of the ticket in 2011, before losing to Buhari in 2015.
#11. Who was Nigeria’s youngest ever head of state?
Gowon became Nigeria’s youngest head of state at the age of 31, when he was chosen to lead the military government following the counter-coup of 1966.
Queen Elizabeth was 34 in 1960 when Nigerian gained independence but still had the British monarch as head of state.
President Buhari at 72, was the oldest president when he was sworn in in 2015.
Leave a Reply