"The smoldering
disillusionment felt by many Nigerians is not so much because their candidate did
not win as because the election they had dared to trust was, in the end, so
unacceptably and unforgivably flawed. Congratulating its outcome,
President Biden, tarnishes America’s self-proclaimed commitment to democracy.
Please do not give the sheen of legitimacy to an illegitimate process. The
United States should be what it says it is."
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Dear President Biden,
Something remarkable happened on the morning of February 25, the day of the Nigerian presidential election. Many Nigerians went out to vote holding in their hearts a new sense of trust. Cautious trust, but still trust. Since the end of military rule in 1999, Nigerians have had little confidence in elections. To vote in a presidential election was to brace yourself for the inevitable aftermath: fraud.
Elections would be rigged because elections
were always rigged; the question was how badly. Sometimes voting felt like an
inconsequential gesture as predetermined “winners” were announced.
A law passed last year, the 2022 Electoral Act, changed everything. It gave legal backing to the electronic accreditation of voters and the electronic transmission of results, in a process determined by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The chair of the commission, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, assured Nigerians that votes would be counted in the presence of voters and recorded in a result sheet, and that a photo of the signed sheet would immediately be uploaded to a secure server. When rumors circulated about the commission not keeping its word, Yakubu firmly rebutted them.
