The result was no surprise, neither was the unrest, but there were also tentative grounds to hope that last weekend’s Nigerian presidential election signalled a turning point for the underperforming African giant.
Goodluck Jonathan retained the presidency with about 57% of the vote. He defeated Muhammadu Buhari, a former military ruler, who polled about 31%. As expected, the results highlighted the geographical divide. Jonathan did particularly well in the predominantly Christian south, whereas Buhari swept many of the Muslim-dominated northern states. There was deadly rioting in Buhari’s northern stronghold.
Most significant in the long term, however, was the verdict of observers that this has been Nigeria’s fairest election in decades. It was far from perfect but it helped to draw a line under the coups, fraud and vote-rigging of the past.
Furthermore, young people turned out in high numbers to elect a man who claims to represent a break from the old order. Just possibly, this was the week Nigeria took an important step towards fulfilling its immense potential.
Few countries fail to punch their weight as dismally as Nigeria. It has Africa’s biggest population at about 150-million people. Its economy has grown 6% or 7% in the past few years. It pumps more oil than any other African country, much of it to the United States, and has vast untapped mineral resources.
But between 1960 and 1999 officials are said to have stolen more than $440-billion from the people. Since 1990 the proportion of Nigerians living in poverty has increased from 49% to 77%. The public education and health systems have all but collapsed. Power cuts are a daily fact of life.
State-sponsored manipulation
The stakes on election day could not have been higher, but in the past voting had seemed futile in the teeth of state-sponsored manipulation. This time felt different. Most tellingly, there was increased political engagement from young people — an estimated 62% of the country’s citizens are younger than 24.
Chude Jideonwo, co-founder of Enough is Enough Nigeria, a youth voter registration campaign, said: “Young people came out massively to vote across the country, including in rural areas. This election disappointed the cynics and defied even our expectations.”
Jonathan (53), a fedora-wearing zoologist, had relentlessly courted the youth vote, building his profile on Facebook and recruiting staff who worked on Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign in the US.
Jideonwo said: “Jonathan spent five or six months trying to engage young people in various ways. His strategy was to emphasise his likeability by being positive and reluctant to criticise. A week ago I would have said it’s too passive, but now it seems to have been a good strategy.”
The conduct at the polls, overseen by respected electoral commissioner Attahiru Jega, also gave cause for cautious optimism. “Election day showed a generally peaceful and orderly process,” said chief European Union election observer Alojz Peterle. EU observers had found that the 2007 elections were not credible.
The former president of Botswana, Festus Mogae, who led the Commonwealth observer group, told the Associated Press: “People outside and Nigerians themselves had come to believe that elections could not reflect the will of the people, but people showed that they can change that.”
This was not the unanimous view. Shehu Sani, president of the Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria, said: “This election is better than the last ones, conducted in 2003 and 2007, but it cannot be said to be free and fair. This is an election that is characterised by violence, financial inducement, forgery, bombings and magical numbers. It’s an improvement in our history of fraudulent elections but it’s also a transparent fraud.”
Violence erupted across the north and the Nigerian Red Cross said churches, mosques and homes had been burned in rioting, with many people being killed.
Authorities in the northern state of Kaduna imposed a 24-hour curfew after protesters set fire to the residence of vice-president Namadi Sambo in the town of Zaria and forced their way into the central prison, releasing inmates. The body of a small boy, shot in the chest by a stray bullet, was brought to a police station.
But hundreds of kilometres away, in the southern Niger Delta, there was a sense of jubilation over the first election of an Ijaw man, the region’s biggest ethnic group, to Nigeria’s highest office. Jonathan inherited the presidency last year after the death of Umaru Yar’Adua and won the ruling People’s Democratic Party nomination to contest this election. He now faces the twin threats of impossibly high expectations in the south and deep suspicion and scepticism in the north. He will have to work extremely hard to bring the divided nation together.
Oronto Douglas, a senior adviser, said: “This is no time for triumphalism. It is a time for deep reflection, for strengthening the bond of our union and for all of us to work together.”
Jonathan’s in-tray is overflowing with education, health and transport demands. He has also promised to deal with the unreliable power grid, which is a constant thorn in the side of businesses and residents. He could face resistance from members of the elite who have made a fortune from squeezing the power supply and selling substitute generators.
There are signs of change in Nigeria. The governor of Lagos, Babatunde Fashola, has been praised for overhauling the vast city, including plans for a new urban railway. The governor of the central bank, Lamido Sanusi, is a fearless reformer and an enemy of corruption. Now Jonathan has the mandate to follow their example, if he has the will and courage to do it. — Guardian News & Media 2011