1979 Nigerian presidential election

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.

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

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.