Nigeria’s gubernatorial elections have been pushed back to March 18 instead of March 11. The country's electoral commission says the extra time will allow officials to reconfigure and deploy voting machines that were used in February's presidential and legislative elections.
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On March 1, Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared Bola Tinubu of the governing All Progressives Congress (APC) the winner of the 2023 presidential election.
It said the 70-year-old former Lagos governor won the race with 37 percent of the vote, while his main rival, People’s Democratic Party (PDP) candidate Atiku Abubakar, came second with 29 percent. The Labour Party’s Peter Obi, who had become a surprise favourite in the run-up to the election, came third with 25 percent.
Soon after the results were announced, congratulatory messages started to pour in from across Africa and the world. The chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, and the chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Guinea-Bissau President Umaro Sissoco Embalo, congratulated President-elect Tinubu on his win. So did the leaders of Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Gambia.
The US Department of State, meanwhile, congratulated not only Tinubu but all Nigerians for what it viewed as a “competitive election” that “represents a new period for Nigerian politics and democracy”. UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly also issued a statement, commending Nigerian voters “for their participation in the Presidential and National Assembly elections and for their patience and resilience in exercising their democratic rights”.
Despite these waves of praise and celebration, however, the election was hardly without problems.
It recorded the lowest turnout since Nigeria’s return to democracy in 1999, with only 27 percent of eligible voters casting ballots. There were widespread allegations of voter suppression and vote buying as well as a few isolated incidents of violence. Most crucially, both Abubakar and Obi disputed the outcome and vowed to challenge it in Nigeria’s highest appeals court.
Nevertheless, despite being far from perfect, Nigeria’s largely peaceful and somewhat efficiently conducted election – which received a stamp of approval from the African Union Election Observation Mission – was a much-welcomed sight in a region long suffering from military coups and strongmen clinging to power.
The head of the ECOWAS Observer Mission to Nigeria, former Sierra Leone President Ernest Koroma, had acknowledged the regional importance of this election days before the polls opened. “Nigeria’s election remains a guide to West Africa,” Koroma said on February 23. “Its failure would spell doom for the sub-region”.
Koromo felt the need to underline the importance of this election because in the days leading up to it, there were growing concerns about the possibility of electoral violence and other likely obstacles to a peaceful transfer of power – and for good reason.
In the last few years, Nigeria has been grappling with severe socio-political and economic challenges, including underfunded public services, police brutality, a stagnant economy, and countrywide insecurity caused by Boko Haram, armed bandits and separatists. Coupled with a long history of military rule, all this raised fears that Nigeria may experience some democratic backsliding in this election cycle.
But despite growing tensions, Nigeria successfully conducted its election and determined its next president without much disturbance. The military stepped in to ensure the security of the polls, but made no move to intervene in the democratic process. Sure, Obi and Abubakar dispute the result, but they appear determined to do so not through violence and populist provocation, but by legal means.
All this stands in striking contrast to the rest of Nigeria’s immediate neighbourhood, where many countries are suffering under military juntas or struggling to hold free and fair elections.
In Sudan, for example, an October 2021 military coup ended the nation’s brief flirtation with democracy, just two years after longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir’s removal from power through a popular revolt. Since the 2021 putsch, the military has frequently cracked down on pro-democracy demonstrations and it stands accused of abducting, raping, torturing and killing protesters.
Similarly in Chad, civil rights groups have been facing violence and threats since the military took control of the country following President Idriss Deby’s death in April 2021. Led by Deby’s son Mahamat Idriss Deby, the coup leaders suspended the constitution, dissolved the parliament and dismissed the government. On October 2022, the military government postponed the country’s planned return to democratic rule for another two years and said it will continue to remain in control until then.
Burkina Faso is also experiencing extreme political instability. Last year, it underwent two military coups in the space of nine months – one that removed President Roch Kabore in January 2022, and another that deposed military leader President Paul-Henri Damiba in September. The military government now in power says the country will not return to civilian rule until at least 2024.
Mali has also experienced two military coups – one in August 2020 and another in May 2021 – and is supposed to restore civilian rule in 2024.
Meanwhile, Guinea’s first democratically-elected leader Alpha Conde was toppled by soldiers in September 2021, following widespread protests against the veteran politician’s controversial move to “reset” his term limit in a constitutional referendum and seek two more terms.
There were also failed coup attempts in Guinea-Bissau and the Gambia in 2022.
So it wouldn’t be wrong to say Nigeria’s neighbourhood is suffocating under a dark cloud of lawlessness, democratic regression and military interventions.
ECOWAS has attempted to defend democracy in the region, albeit without much success, through ostracising military governments and establishing progressive policies and measures. It has suspended Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea from the union indefinitely and imposed travel sanctions on senior leaders and government officials from these countries, presumably until civilian leadership and democracy are restored.
Furthermore, it has twice attempted to introduce two-term presidential limits – which are already in place in Nigeria – for its member states, first in 2015 and then in 2021, to counter the growing trend of “third-termism” and advance regional stability. Regrettably, it has failed to secure a unanimous agreement.
In this context, the election in Nigeria was a breath of fresh air. Granted, the polls were not free of sporadic violence, long delays and technical problems. But as the head of the African Union Election Observation Mission, former Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, said in a February 28 statement, the “electoral environment was generally peaceful despite isolated incidents of violence” and “voting and counting took place in an open and transparent atmosphere in the presence of observers, party agents and media”.
Indeed, the political atmosphere before and after the elections has served to confirm the determination shared by most Nigerians to preserve civilian rule and strengthen democracy.
On March 6, for example, Abubakar led hundreds of PDP supporters in a peaceful march to INEC’s offices in Abuja, where he delivered a petition and reiterated his party’s decision to challenge the results of the presidential election. Abubakar’s apparent determination to observe the rule of law as he disputes the election result is confirmation of the confidence Nigeria’s leading opposition parties have in the country’s democratic processes and institutions.
So sure, there was much that was wrong with Nigeria’s election. But despite all the controversies and disputes, Nigeria successfully conducted a democratic election and presented the region with an (albeit imperfect) example to look up to. And for this, it should be applauded.
By Tafi Mhaka, Al Jazeera
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Nigeria has postponed Saturday’s crucial state elections as Africa’s most populous country wrangles over a presidential vote that opposition parties claim was rigged.
The electoral commission emerged from an hours-long meeting on Wednesday night to announce it was pushing back polls to elect powerful state governors by a week.
The commission attributed the delay to problems with reconfiguring a digital voting system that had been the source of rancour and international criticism after it failed to perform as promised in the presidential elections held on 25 February.
Earlier on Wednesday the court of appeal rejected a request by the opposition People’s Democratic party (PDP) and the Labour party to inspect the digital tablets used to screen voters and transmit results from polling stations.
The electoral commission said that while the ruling made it possible for it to prepare the tablets for state elections, the ruling had come “far too late”.
“We thank Nigerians and friends of Nigeria for their understanding as we continue to deal with these difficult issues,” it said in a statement.
Labour and the PDP have alleged that the failure to transmit results from many polling stations to a much-heralded public website until days after the presidential polling day allowed the ruling All Progressives Congress party to collude with electoral commission officials to manipulate results.
They are preparing for a rerun in court of the three-way battle electrified by Peter Obi’s outsider campaign. The APC candidate, Bola Tinubu, won with fewer than 9m votes after the country’s lowest ever electoral turnout.
On Monday the PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, led hundreds of supporters in a march to the electoral commission’s headquarters in Abuja. Before the electoral commission decision on Wednesday, Obi cancelled planned governorship campaigning, saying he remained committed to the “mission of retrieving our mandate”.
The electoral commission has said it plans to use the same public website that has been criticised by international observers for its previous failure. They concluded the presidential election fell short of Nigerians’ expectations, as results were meant to be uploaded to the website directly from polling stations on polling day. However, observers have not alleged fraud as they had after some previous Nigerian elections.
The Labour party separately told the Guardian its voters faced being intimidated at polling stations in the state elections. The party’s candidate for Lagos governor said party volunteers would “stand up and defend” supporters and resist any attempts to suppress votes for him.
The PDP and Labour have seized on what became a chaotic count after the failures with the digital voting system, as well as evidence of intimidation and voter suppression by ruling party agents at polling stations. One independent observer, the non-profit Yiaga Africa, reported cases of intimidation at as many as one in 20 polling stations. It is unclear how much these may have affected results.
The APC denies manipulating results and has suggested its supporters were themselves intimidated in Obi strongholds.
Nigeria will elect governors in 28 of its 36 states, as well as state assembly members, with fierce contests expected in cities in which Obi did well in the presidential vote, such as Lagos and the capital, Abuja. In both of these he used a campaign built on social media to upset the odds by winning votes with a promise to tackle corruption.
Particular focus will fall on Lagos, home to 20 million people, thriving tech and arts sectors and an economy that would be ninth-largest in Africa were it a country. It is also the home town of Tinubu, who is considered the “godfather” of the city he used to govern and is said to be desperate to ensure his party maintains power of it.
Were he to lose, assuming he is sworn in as president, he would be the first sitting Nigerian president not to control his home state.
Labour’s Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, a 39-year-old architect, is taking on the incumbent APC governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who has launched a charm offensive in Lagos in recent weeks including the release of vehicles impounded for minor traffic offences.
Rhodes-Vivour said the party would send out a lot more people than on presidential polling day to monitor the process and provide security.
Joseph Essien, 47, an Obi-supporting driver in Lagos, criticised the police over the presidential election. “They didn’t come to [voters’] rescue when needed,” he said. “Policemen were there and they did nothing so you expect people to go again and not defend themselves?”
Joana Andrew, 46, an APC supporter who has been selling snacks outside Tinubu’s high-walled Lagos compound, said Sanwo-Olu had a “brighter chance” of winning the state than Tinubu had during the presidential voting. “The people who come out to vote for Obi, they love coming out for the presidency – when it comes for governorship they withdraw,” she said.
By Richard Assheton, The Guardian
Related story: Video - Opposition candidate Peter Obi says he will prove he won presidential election in Nigeria
