Former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari has won Nigeria's presidential election, Reuters reported on Tuesday afternoon, defeating current President Goodluck Jonathan by more than two million votes to become leader of Africa's largest democracy.
His win marks the first time in Nigeria's history that an opposition party has democratically taken control of the country from the ruling party.
Jonathan has yet to comment.
"As for the election, we have won it!" Garba Shehu, Buhari's spokesman, said outside the party's headquarters on Tuesday, according to the Associated Press. He added, however, a word of caution: "We are not out of the woods yet, we don't know what tricks the government is going to play."
Buhari's wife, Aisha Buhari, tweeted that the victory was a "triumphant show of democracy."
Nigerians are aware now more than ever that the people have the power to sway the fate of a nation.— Aisha Buhari (@IamAishaBuhari) March 31, 2015
Nigerians didn't wait for a concession speech to begin celebrating. As word broke that Buhari had won the election, Nigerians took to the street to celebrate; dancing, cheering and performing wheelies on scooters.
Nigerians across the country hit the polls on Saturday, casting votes in a hotly contested presidential election between two candidates with opposing backgrounds.
President Goodluck Jonathan was running for reelection. He is a Christian with supporters in the mainly Christian south, and has been blasted for what critics have called a slow response to radical Boko Haram militants in Nigeria's northeast.
Jonathan's main opponent, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, a Muslim with a support base in the predominantly Muslim north, was the military ruler of Nigeria for nearly two years during the 1980s.
The austere retired general, who says he is a convert to democracy, had promised that if he won he would stamp out an insurgency in the north waged by Boko Haram, a homegrown Islamic extremist group that has killed thousands of people, many of them civilians, has kidnapped even young girls, and has pledged fealty to the so-called Islamic State.
Critics and supporters agree that Buhari is the one leader who did not treat the country's treasury as his personal piggy bank. During his brief 1984-1985 dictatorship he ruled with an iron fist, jailing people even for littering, and ordering civil servants who arrived late to work to do squats. He gagged the press and jailed journalists to cover up a deepening economic crisis as prices tumbled for the oil on which Nigeria's economy depends. He was eventually overthrown by his own soldiers.
Nigeria's 170 million people are divided almost equally between Christians mainly in the south and Muslims like Buhari who dominate the north. Buhari for the first time won states in the southwest and even took one third of votes in a southeastern state — an unprecedented development that some say reflects an anti-Jonathan more than a pro-Buhari sentiment.