Presidential and legislative polls were recently conducted in Nigeria under very difficult circumstances. A botched change of currency that prevented depositors withdrawing their funds demonstrated yet again the rank incompetence and callous disregard of the ruling elite for the suffering of the masses. A fuel shortage made it difficult for commuters to move freely. Widespread kidnappings, terrorist attacks, and crime have continued, resulting in at least 10,000 deaths last year.
Many thus feared that the polls might never take place despite the assurances of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and its arrogant Oxbridge-educated chair, Mahmood Yakubu, who had obstinately refused to apologise to Nigerians for the last-minute postponement of the 2019 election. Nigeria’s preceding three elections in 2011, 2015, and 2019 had all been postponed, so it was a miracle that this one was actually held on time.
Many have been critical of INEC’s performance as an impartial referee. However, the clear flaws in its electoral process seem to be due more to complacent incompetence than systematic rigging. Any close observer of Nigeria knows that there was nothing in this election that had not been witnessed in the previous six presidential polls since 1999.
The main difference was that Yakubu had overpromised and under-delivered, placing too much faith in the much touted Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) that he consistently reassured Nigerians would work at all 176,734 polling stations. The system, however, experienced widespread failure on polling day, resulting in delays in uploading results, and many counts having to be manually entered. Yakubu’s failure to communicate timeously and transparently allowed the rumour mill to flourish, opening the floodgates to still unsubstantiated claims of collusion between INEC and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
In a solid post-election analysis, the Abuja-based Centre for Democracy and Development’s (CDD) electoral observers noted that just 36.7% of voting stations opened on time, with the Southeast, Lagos, and Plateau particularly affected. INEC’s BVAS recorded many failures, particularly in the Northeast, with illegal voter accreditation also prevalent in the Northwest. This meant INEC’s Result Viewing Portal (IReV) could not transmit results immediately from polling stations, as promised. CDD observers further recorded some incidents of vote-buying and voter intimidation (especially in the Northwest, South South, and Southeast). These did not, however, appear widespread enough to have changed the electoral outcome.
The Return of the Three Kings
Nigeria’s politics appear to have returned to the First Republic (1960-1966) dynamics of three strong ethnic blocs. Bola Tinubu mostly held sway in his Yoruba Southwest stronghold; Atiku Abubakar in the Hausa-Fulani North; and Peter Obi in the Igbo Southeast. All three candidates each shared a dozen states. INEC reported that the APC’s Tinubu had won the election with 8.7 million votes (36%), trailed by the PDP’s Abubakar with 6.9 million (29%), and the Labour party’s Obi with 6.1 million (25%). Disgracefully, less than 10% of legislative candidates in Nigeria‘s chauvinistic political system were women.
The ruling APC appears to have used its 23 governors- who control the political machinery and money in their fiefdoms – effectively, while five of the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) dozen governors – calling themselves the G5 – opposed their own flagbearer, Abubakar, for having breached the traditional practice of power rotating between North and South. Tinubu had a dozen governors in the North who were able to prevent Atiku sweeping the region. The PDP chieftain was also damaged in previously impregnable strongholds in the Southeast and South South by Obi’s sweeping victories in both regions.
Furthermore, Tinubu had much deeper pockets than his rivals, having played the long game by reportedly amassing a war-chest from his control of the Southwest for two decades. Obi had no governors or structures across the 36 states, but ran an energetic social media campaign fuelled by the fervour of Nigeria’s southern youths. He did well to take Tinubu’s home-base of Lagos. Atiku also won Osun in Tinubu’s Southwestern heartland, demonstrating widespread discontent among the Yoruba at Tinubu’s heavy-handedness and Muslim-Muslim ticket. APC victory in Rivers and the PDP in Yobe, further broke with traditional voting patterns.
Despite much complaints and many glitches, the new BVAS electoral system actually made it more difficult to engage in the direct rigging of the past. Unscrupulous actors had to find other strategies such as voter suppression and intimidation, and providing gifts to voters in order to buy their loyalty. “Jagaban” – Tinubu – thus appears to have had the stronger political machine, and deployed it as ruthlessly as the notorious Daley family wielded their political machine in Chicago – America’s Brechtian “Jungle of Cities” – for decades.
The Obidient echo chamber
Even though the Labour Party’s Peter Obi would have been the best candidate, he failed to impress in the televised debate I watched. I did not feel that he had the answers to Nigeria’s pressing security and socio-economic challenges, nor that he was radically different from the mainstream politicians he was competing against, having left the PDP following the loss of presidential primaries to Atiku, 10 months ago. The strongest argument for Obi’s candidature, for me, was the need for national restitution: the chance for Nigeria to show that the civil war of five decades ago had ended, and that a member of the only major geo-political zone not to have held executive office, should be given an opportunity to rule.
His chances had been bolstered by multiple polls showing him leading (though a large number of voters declared themselves undecided), and by the fact that 51% of all voters, and 76% of new voters, were youths whom Obi had mobilised in large numbers.
In the end, however, the lowest turn-out in Nigeria’s history – 25.2 million out of 93.4 million voters (27%), down from 35% in 2019 – handed the advantage to machine politicians like Tinubu rather than Obi’s “people power”. Many “Obidients” represented a somewhat intolerant social media echo chamber, accepting his landslide victories in the Southeast and shock win in Lagos, while questioning the fairness of polls in areas in which he lost. Labour Party insurgents trounced the incumbent governors of Abia, Benue, and Enugu in Senate contests, while Obi won in Nasarawa, Plateau, Delta, and Edo which had incumbent APC and PDP governors.
Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, demonstrated the perils of the “cult of celebrity” in making unsubstantiated claims of electoral fraud on BBC radio based on social media posts, having earlier portrayed Obi in messianic terms. Her depiction, in the New York Times, of Nigeria’s mainstream media as instinctively showing “political deference,” was an ahistorical and shameful slur on the likes of the Guardian, Punch, Tribune, and other irrepressible outlets who have kept press freedom alive for decades, even during the darkest days of military rule. Today, mainstream television outlets like Channels and Arise still doggedly strive to hold power accountable. The fact that mainstream Western media outlets tend to prefer superficial celebrity commentary to expert analysis of African issues, underlines the continued condescending trivialisation of the continent’s politics and people.
Western attempts to delegitimize the election
Many Western media – and some observer groups – focused on the most negative aspects of the polls. They seemed outraged by the outcome of the presidential election, and some appeared to be trying to delegitimise Tinubu’s victory. A Financial Times editorial seemed particularly irate, berating Nigeria for allegedly failing to set an example for West Africa, and virtually calling for the annulment of the polls, citing the examples in Kenya (2017) and Malawi (2020), without seeming to take into account the very different circumstances in all three cases.
Any attempts to remind Western critics that elections, even in their countries, were sometimes flawed and opinion polls frequently wrong, were simply dismissed out of hand. So, the “dimpled chads” in Florida that gave George W. Bush victory over Al Gore in 2000; Donald Trump’s crude attempts to rig the 2020 polls; and the erroneous polls that had predicted victory for Hillary Clinton and defeat for Brexit (both in 2016) were conveniently airbrushed from the record.
Whither pax Nigeriana?
Historical perspective is, however, always important. Nigeria has conducted seven elections in the last 24 years, and managed to avoid a return to military rule. It is important to remember that its first two democratic experiments lasted just five and four years respectively, while military brass hats have ruled the country for 29 years. The stakes are thus extremely high. With rumours of efforts to derail the electoral process and impose a military regime, these are not theoretical concerns that we in Africa can take lightly. As the “Men on Horseback” – the military – have returned to Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Chad, it is important that Nigeria set a good democratic example by keeping the soldiers in their barracks. As is often remarked: as Nigeria goes, so goes Africa.
No country for old men
Nigeria’s challenges are enormous, and will clearly require dynamic leadership: terrorism; farmer-herder clashes; 138 million poverty-stricken citizens; a $98 billion national debt; and 37% unemployment, are just part of lackadaisical president Muhammadu Buhari’s difficult legacy, despite his building of some road and rail infrastructure projects. The septuagenarian Tinubu – an ethically challenged godfather who has emerged from the shadows to sit on the throne – is similarly frail, often slurring his speech
Nigeria is clearly no country for old men. But it seems Africa’s Gulliver is stuck with yet another Lilliputian member of the geriatric “old guard” whose entitled slogan is that it is his turn to rule. Could this be the last throw of the dice for contemporaries that Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, once dubbed “The Wasted Generation”?
Professor Adebajo is a senior research fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship in South Africa.
