Nigeria: Tainted Presidency For A Broken Country

 By Ugo Onuoha

Elections are combining with other factors to destroy Nigeria’s democracy. And the country itself. The signs are writ large though we play the ostrich. Elsewhere, especially in saner climes, elections help to strengthen the foundations and building blocks of democracy. Not so here. Since the return of civil rule in 1999, which by the way had been dominated by retired army generals, elections have turned out to be poorly planned and even more poorly conducted.

The consequences are that election results have serially failed to reflect the will of the majority of Nigerians, and so more and more of our people are turning their backs on the ballot box as an acceptable mode of choosing their preferred political leaders. The fear is that the outcome of the 2023 presidential election will compound the loss of faith in democracy.

Except for one or two instances in the past 24 years during which Nigeria has conducted seven general elections, voter turnout has been on the decline, which indicates lack of confidence by Nigerians on our elections, the quality of the conduct of the elections has been deteriorating; and the results of the elections have consistently not met the expectations of the voters. In fact, in 2007, the winner of the presidential contest, the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, denounced the election, saying it was blemished. Yar’Adua was a member of the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party [PDP], which superintended that election. In hindsight, Yar’Adua’s must be the era of innocence.

It will be hard, if not impossible, today for a beneficiary of an electoral heist to admit that his or her mandate was fraudulent.

The tragedy of our situation is that in spite of the clear danger that elections pose to Nigeria’s democracy, we have continued to muddle along in the belief that the country has a way of pulling back from the precipice when the push gets to the shove.

This belief must have informed the  bizarre conduct of the February 25, 2023, presidential and National Assembly elections. And the controversies that have trailed them.

Many local and international groups, which observed the election, were unanimous that the conduct of the election was way below even the low standards that Nigeria had set for itself. That was damning. Just last weekend, the ambassador of the United States of America said as much the same about the outcome of the election not reflecting the expectations of Nigerians. And to think that she spoke well after her country’s State Department [Foreign Affairs Ministry] had casually endorsed the outcome of the polls after a slap in the wrist for Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission [INEC].

Back home the election was marred by widespread ballot fraud, violence, intimidation, failed logistics, omission of the logos of some political parties in the ballot papers, sabotage and an apparent deliberate disregard by INEC of its own rules and guidelines for the conduct of the election. Most egregious and suspicious was that INEC neglected or rather refused to upload the results from polling units through BVAS [Bimodal voter accreditation system] online and real time to its server which was meant to be accessed real time by Nigerians. Except for the beneficiaries of the obvious electoral brigandage, the rest of Nigerians are outraged. But not only Nigerians.

Global news outlets have dismissed the conduct and outcome of the election. One newspaper said Nigeria, one of the biggest democracies in the world, had just succeeded in naming an infirm person who had been linked to illicit drug business in the US in the 1990s as its next President. Another said that the president-elect was a political fixer and a billionaire whose source of wealth has been linked to government treasury and other opaque sources. And yet another described the election as a sham, which could send a wrong message to other fledgling democracies on the African continent. It said Nigeria, given its size and potential wealth, has on account of the recent election become a bad example to African countries.

A coalition of about 70 civil society organizations, which monitored the election, had set the tone for the assessment of the conduct and the outcome of the election on March 1, hours after the INEC had declared Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress [APC] as the winner of the presidential poll. The coalition said: “… the 2023 presidential and National Assembly elections were marred by very poor organization, severe logistical and operational failure, lack of essential electoral transparency, substantial disruption of voting, and several incidents of violence. As a result, the process cannot be considered to have been credible. 

Given the lack of transparency, particularly in the result collation process, there can be no confidence in the results of these elections. In addition, there was very poor communication from INEC on election day and on its challenges with its processes; its citizens contact [telephone] numbers did not work and even when there were challenges with uploads to the INEC results viewing [iReV] portal. This is all the more disappointing since the elections were held in an atmosphere in which the people showed remarkable commitment to democracy, eagerly engaging in the electoral process and waiting patiently to vote in very difficult circumstances”.

To a great extent the analysis of the many shortcomings of the elections reflects the positions of many observer groups and those of many, probably majority of, Nigerians. If this is the case, as it should be notwithstanding how the Appeal Court [tribunal] or the Supreme Court rules ultimately, the conclusion that can easily be reached is that the regime of Alhaji Tinubu will struggle with legitimacy crisis.

Therefore, the outcry by the APC campaign council that those who were not declared winners of the presidential election, particularly the Labour Party [LP] candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, were working to delegitimize the administration of Alhaji Tinubu is a red herring. 

The legitimacy challenge for Alhaji Tinubu if he becomes President are glaring and in plain sight.

One, the process that led to his being awarded the presidency has severally been faulted. In other words, he holds a tainted trophy. Second, a total vote count of 8,794,726 from over 90 million registered voters out of which about 87 million collected their permanent voters cards is the worst in the last 24 years. To be elected by 8.7 million persons to lead over 200 million people is a crying shame. 

Third, Alhaji Tinubu won only 12 of the country’s 36 states. It means he was technically elected by barely one third of the states of Nigeria, making him a minority President which adds to his legitimacy problems. If you add the fact that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the PDP won 12 states and LP’s Mr. Obi also won 12 states if you treat the FCT as a state, then you will appreciate the enormity of Tinubu’s fractured and challenged mandate. 

Fourth, the spread of his vote harvests in Nigeria’s geo-political zones in spite of the brigandage of the governor of Rivers state Nyesom Wike is an insight into his non-acceptance as a national figure. He shares this problem in common with the President, Maj-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari. Narrow mandate when badly handled imposes a burden on the ruler and a cost on section[s] of the country. Going by antecedents, Tinubu may not be different from Buhari in managing Nigeria’s diversity given allegations that he excised a part of the country during the campaign leading up to the APC primary election in June 2022.

Five, the allegation about Tinubu being a bag man for drug traffickers in the US in the 1990s for which he reportedly forfeited $460,000 to that country’s Internal Revenue Service; the various allegations of corruption and state [Lagos] capture which he denies; issues with schools he attended and certificates he obtained; his parentage; and, the Muslim- Muslim pairing will be legitimacy issues for his administration if it comes to be, and for as long as it lasts. Finally, how much legitimacy do you expect when less than 19% of eligible voters reportedly put you in office.

*Onuoha is a commentator on public issues