Initial results indicated Buhari had won 94 percent of the vote in Borno state — the region worst affected by the Islamists’ rampage and from where more than 200 schoolgirls were abducted in April last year.
Hundreds of thousands of people defied threats of suicide attacks and bombings to vote, with polling stations set up in camps for people displaced by the conflict in state capital Maiduguri.
Buhari, a Muslim, won massively in the violence-hit north but also made crucial gains elsewhere, including Lagos, which had been targeted by both sides as a swing state.
Jonathan at one point clawed back the deficit to some 500,000 votes after winning near total support in his home state of Bayelsa and neighbouring Rivers.
But it was not enough to seize back the momentum and with eight states to declare, most of them in the north, APC spokesman Lai Mohammed called victory.
“This is the first time the opposition has voted a government out of power in Nigeria’s history,” he told AFP.
Buhari has acknowledged that he cannot perform miracles, with poverty widespread among Nigeria’s 173 million people, the ongoing threat from Boko Haram and the oil-dependent economy stalling.
But with his military background, the former leader was seen as a better bet to fight the insurgents, while he has cast himself as an anti-corruption crusader — despite excesses and abuses during his military rule.
He has vowed to lead by personal example, pledging: “Corruption will have no place and the corrupt will not be appointed to my administration.”
But he has rejected PDP charges that he is unchanged from his days in the military, where he fell foul of rights groups in his pursuit of corrupt officials and general “indiscipline”.
“Before you is a former military ruler and a converted democrat who is ready to operate under democratic rules,” he said in February.
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