Nigerian Stock Market Dips Further Amidst Tinubu’s Victory

The Nigerian stock market on Thursday continued its losing streak triggered after the announcement of the All Progressives Congress candidate, Bola Tinubu as the president-elect amidst controversies.

The All-Share-Index closed 0.53 per cent at 55,670.24, according to market data analysed on the Nigerian Exchange Limited.

Market capitalization dropped to N30,326,556,130,429.25 by the close of trading.

The drop began on Wednesday when the APC candidate, Tinubu was announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission as the winner of the 2023 election with 8.7 million votes.

He contested alongside the Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi (6.1 million votes) and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (6.8 million votes).

Consequently, the All-Share Index fell on Wednesday to 55,508.61 points from the 55,806.26 held at the close of trade on Tuesday.

Market Capitalisation shed N162.1bn to N30.2trn.

The market had closed in February with 4.8 per cent gains despite the cash crunch induced by the Central Bank of Nigeria’s naira redesign policy. Market capitalization closed N30.4trn.

The election has been described as lacking transparency by the European Union observers, US and the African Union after guidelines were broken in the conduct of the election.

The two opposition candidates, LP and the PDP however disagreed and called for the cancellation of the presidential poll.

According to Obi, his party will challenge the process that led to INEC’s declaration of Tinubu as president.

Based on the election guidelines as empowered by the Electoral Act 2022 as amended, the results of the polls were supposed to be transmitted through the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BIVAS) from the polling units to avoid manipulations.

But the INEC server was down on the day of the election which hindered the electronic transmission of the results in real-time as contained in the guideline.