As dust settles over the Nigerian presidential elections, young Nigerians are confronted with a reality where their least favourite candidate may become their next president. It’s all done, INEC crowned 70-year old Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Tuesday while the country slept, and the ex-governor of Lagos has already accepted INEC’s result, even as his campaign council urged his major competitors to accept the obviously flawed verdict, and put across a congratulatory call to Nigeria’s new president-elect.
That is unlikely to happen though, as Peter Obi of the Labour Party has announced his intentions to contest INEC’s decision in court, a position Atiku was quick to recreate, meaning a definitive end to this saga lingers. But while results remain the chief subject of any election, the election process itself has presented other talking points, some recurrent parts of every election cycle, others new to 2023. Here are some of the most important issues to emerge from these elections
Voter Suppression Remains A Viable Strategy
What do you do if you are a power hungry mogul who can feel the will of the people is against your candidacy? You simply limit their ability to vote on election day. For this, tried and tested disenfranchisement strategies were rolled out. INEC officials delayed voting in some polling units until hours after it was billed to begin.
And when they did show, it was often without enough voting material; armed thugs scattered would-be voters who had peacefully conducted themselves to exercise their franchise; gunmen arrived to snatch ballot boxes and strike out the votes of entire polling units.
The result? 2023 records the lowest voter turnout percentage in Nigeria’s election history, a statistic contrary to actual desire of Nigerians to vote in the election. With the increasing reach of social media though, acts like these can be documented in real time, and it is only a matter of time before social media is able to provide a way for countermeasures to be drawn up against the tools of the establishment.
INEC’s Position as a Non-Partisan Body
Finding out that the head of the “Independent National Electoral Commission” (read the first word again) is appointed by the President is news that would only shock anyone not desensitised by Nigeria. The powers are enshrined in Section 154(1) of the constitution, which also grants the president the power to appoint INEC Resident Electoral Commissioners (state level chairman).
While a process of confirmation is required by the Senate, passing any bill through Nigeria’s 9th Senate has been no problem for Buhari, who shares a political party with the majority of senators. This loophole basically empowers the president to choose who governs INEC, and, by corrupt extension, who governs the country next.
It may explain some of the blatant malpractices from INEC in this election, especially when it ignored its own laws and conducted the election without electronic transmission of results. It calls for a constitution amendment to create a more transparent selection process for such a sensitive position.
The Actual Role Of International Observers In Nigerian Elections
As is always the case, Nigeria played a host to an assortment of international observers ahead of the elections, from the European Union’s envoy, the African Union’s delegation and the U.S.’s International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute.
Already preliminary reports are in, and while they mostly fault INEC for the logistics issues experienced on election day, none of the international observers has raised a serious question mark over the integrity of the commission, as they would rather shine a torch at incompetence when corruption stares them stark in the face.
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was quick to congratulate Tinubu following his victory, and it is proof that international bodies can excuse a breach of democracy in a bid to maintain stability of their interests. Any change that will come to electoral process will have to come from ourselves.
Labour Party’s Victories At The National Assembly
From Peter Obi’s declaration for Labour Party nine months ago and even until the eve of Saturday’s election, there were those that maintained that the LP, a relatively small fish in Nigeria’s pond, lacked the much-flogged “structure” to win Nigerian elections. Saturday, even without the crowning of Peter Obi himself, brought a definite end to that rhetoric.
In a manner that could not be better described even by elite fictionists, many people who happened to be at the right party were granted paved paths to our National Assembly as Nigerians thumbprinted furiously against the LP logo—no matter what ballot sheet it appeared on.
Political upsets came in a flurry, as former governors like Enugu’s Ifeanyi Ugwanyi and Abia’s Okezie Ikpeazu fell to working class men & women at the polls. Labour Party’s Ireti Kingibe ended Philip Aduda’s 12 year stay in the senate in the FCT, and he is one of many long time senators whose reigns will come to an unexpected end.
The Power Of Young Voters
“Okay, let the youth vote for them”, PDP’s Atiku Abubakar says at the end of a clip in which he downplayed the Labour Party’s prospects and grossly underestimated the influence of young people in deciding the country’s next leader.
While the popular youth candidate may not have won—according to INEC anyway—Mr Atiku must have had in mind a lot less than 6 million voters when he dismissed an entire section of the demography with that statement. It was not without backing, though.
Nigerian youth, having lost faith in the electoral process and gone several election seasons without a suitable candidate to throw their weight behind, had come to see election day as a really quiet public holiday. But 2023 elections were different, and any candidate who subsequently ignores members of the electorate between the ages of 18 and 35 is effectively turning their back to the majority of registered voters.
Tribalism Is Holding Us Back
One of the saddest parts of social media is stumbling on young, educated people throwing tribal slurs at each other. It makes for a disturbing revelation, that perhaps tribalism is buried in Nigerians even beyond the reach of education and exposure, its purported antidotes.
Of course, these are a few bad eggs, but their existence at all is detrimental. If, in 2023, we can not climb beyond the most basic of markers, like tribe, religion and gender, when making decisions as important as elections, then we have some way to go before the country can grow.
And while the majority of Nigerian youth are indeed as accepting as they preach, a lot of offline effort will be needed to cleanse those around us of ugly bigotry, so that the country can pull in a single direction towards good governance.
Freedom Fighting Rhetoric in Music Does Not Translate to Dutiful Citizenry
Well, celebrities disappointing young Nigerians by their silence during elections would only be surprising to those who hold them to a higher standard than performing the art they are known for. The self-styled African Giant, Burna Boy, has come under particularly intense fire for this, but it is only deserving given how he has positioned himself to foreign media to be the voice of the common person.
When he did speak out, it was only to make things worse, and with another artist like Falz activity involved in the election process, it becomes clearer which of Fela’s supposed successors truly draws from his activism. Other artists’ silence are going under the radar, mostly because Nigerians are too occupied to draw up a list of supportive celebrities, but as soon as they get the all clear from their teams to resume publicising and releasing their craft, it may be important to remember and prioritise those who stood with us through this period.
Gaslighting Is An Effective Tactic For The Ruling Class
When elections are rigged as brazenly as they have been in 2023, the people behind it must be quick to put propaganda machines in place to spin the narrative. Already the APC presidential campaign council, even before the conclusion of the collation process, had nullified the question marks posed by competing parties over the election’s credibility, as they called on opposition parties to accept defeat with honour.
Even worse, APC chairman Abdullahi Adamu dismissed the Labour Party’s stance on the election’s result, claiming Peter Obi does not show maturity in trying to recover his Certificate of Return. The APC followed this up with allegations of their own against Peter Obi’s win in the South East, where the only electoral violation recorded was late arrival by INEC officials and inadequate ballot papers, two factors that actually weakened his votes in his stronghold.
The Struggle For Nigeria’s Freedom From Tyrants Is A Marathon Not A Sprint, And We’re Off To A Good Start
As Peter Obi has been consistent in saying, Nigeria’s ruling class—the same set of men that have been in and around federal and state levels of power since before you were born—was never going to concede power the first time you asked.
Regardless of what comes of his quest to seek redress in courts, the good we have done in the past year is a fundamental building block for the eventual liberation of our country from those who see our coffers as their personal accounts.
If we are going to build on this, we will need even more people involved in the electoral process. The only reason we have so much confidence that the presidential election was flawed was because we witnessed it ourselves, we saw and recorded votes jubilantly counted for Labour Party before they were dampened by INEC’s official numbers.
As young people trying to take a hold of our country and ensure our futures are not left in the hands of self-serving corrupt officials like our parents’ was, the 2023 election was a very good start, and strong evidence for every candidate not to dismiss us in subsequent polls. Either now or in the near future, we will get it right.
