Former military Head of State, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (rtd.), has swept aside four challengers to pick the presidential flag of the mega opposition party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), for the 2015 elections.

He thrashed ex-Vice President Atiku Abubakar, Governors Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso of Kano and Rochas Okorocha of Imo, as well as Pharmacist Sam Ndah-Isaiah, winning with a landslide at the Teslim Balogun Stadium, Surulere, Lagos, where the APC presidential primary election has been holding since yesterday.

Buhari won 3,430 of the valid 5,992 votes cast by the delegates (6,008 total votes were cast but 16 votes were declared invalid). Kwankwaso came second with 974 votes, while Atiku, who had been expected to give Buhari a run for his money, surprisingly came third with 954 votes. Okorocha came fourth with 624 votes while Ndah-Isaiah brought up the rear with only 10 votes.

Buhari is now set for another showdown with President Goodluck Jonathan of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who beat him to the plum job in 2011, when he ran on the platform of a smaller party, the Congress for Progress Change (CPC), one of the APC merger partners.

•Photo shows Buhari.