ABUJA, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) -- Nigeria's governing All Progressives Congress (APC) party is set to confirm incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari as its candidate for next year's presidential election in Africa's most populous country.
Although he is the sole presidential aspirant of the governing party, the political group opted for direct presidential primaries on Friday, held across Nigeria's 36 states.
One local political analyst said this direct primary process would give all party members the opportunity to ratify the president's candidacy.
In a statement released on Saturday night, presidential spokesman Garba Shehu said the huge turnout of millions of registered party members at all voting centers across the country proved "that the president has an incomparable ability to reach out to people and mobilize votes."
"It is significant that President Buhari has won a major victory, fair and square through a direct nationwide primary, a system that seeks to break the mold. The president has shown that you don't have to be a party owner or go through a difficult inner party consensus to emerge as a candidate," he added.
Results of the presidential primary were being collated across the country since Friday night. Local sources said the collation of results may be completed by Sunday.
As of Saturday night, collation of votes from at least eight states had been completed. Official results released by the party showed Buhari had polled millions of votes from the northwest region of the country, including Kano, Sokoto, Zamfara, and his own state, Katsina.
In Kano alone, the president received more than 2.9 million votes, the party said.
Buhari is expected to be confirmed as the APC presidential candidate after a collation of the results.
Nigeria will hold its presidential election in February 2019.
