Atiku Abubakar (75)

PeoPle’s DeMocratic Party (PDP)

Atiku Abubakar GCON is a Nigerian politician and businessman who served as the vice president of Nigeria from 1999 to 2007 during the presidency of Olusegun Obasanjo. He ran as governor of Adamawa State in 1990, 1997, and later in 1998, being elected before becoming Olusegun Obasanjo’s running mate during the 1999 presidential election and being re-elected in 2003. Atiku Abubakar has unsuccessfully run for the office of President of Nigeria five times: in 1993, 2007, 2011, 2015, and 2019. In 1993, he contested the Social Democratic Party presidential primaries, losing to Moshood Abiola and Baba Gana Kingibe. He was a presidential candidate of the Action Congress in the 2007 presidential election, coming in third to Umaru Yar’Adua of the PDP and Muhammadu Buhari of the ANPP. He contested the presidential primaries of the People’s Democratic Party during the 2011 presidential election, losing out to incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan. Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar clinched the presidential ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), having scored the highest vote in the party’s primary election held on May 28 at the Moshood Abiola National Stadium in Abuja.

Bola Ahmed Tinubu (70)

all ProgressiVe coNgress (aPc)

Bola Ahmed Adekunle Tinubu is a Nigerian accountant and politician who served as the Governor of Lagos State from 1999 to 2007 and Senator for Lagos West during the brief Third Republic. Tinubu spent his early life in southwestern Nigeria and later moved to the United States, where he studied accounting at Chicago State University. He returned to Nigeria in the early 1980s and was employed by Mobil Nigeria as an accountant before entering politics as a Lagos West senatorial candidate in 1992 under the banner of the Social Democratic Party. After Sani Abacha dissolved the Senate in 1993, Tinubu became an activist, campaigning for the return of democracy as part of the National Democratic Coalition movement. Although he was forced into exile in 1994, Tinubu returned after Abacha’s 1998 death triggered the beginning of the transition to the Fourth Republic. Former governor of Lagos State, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, emerged the flagbearer of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the 2023 election in the primary election held on Wednesday, June 8, 2022, in Abuja. Tinubu was a two-time governor of Lagos State and the former National Chairman of the party.