This week, the opening salvo will be fired to signal the onset of the final round of voting in Nigeria’s electoral marathon. This is not a reference to the state-level ballots that occurred around the country on Saturday, March 18. I refer instead to something far more consequential.

Democracy may be about choices and decisions by citizens in theory. As practised in Nigeria, however, citizens are mostly spectators. In every election, Nigeria’s judges have the final votes.

Every election cycle in Nigeria has three seasons. The campaign season belongs to the parties, the politicians, and godfathers. This is followed by the voting season, during which the security agencies, thugs, and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) hold sway. Thereafter, matters shift to the courts for the dispute resolution season, which belongs to the lawyers (mostly Senior Advocates of Nigeria, SANs) and judges. All three are separate but interdependent.

Of 1,490 seats contested federally and in the states in 2019 (excluding the CT Area Council ballots), the courts decided 805 (54.02%). This is higher than just over 45% recorded in 2015 and 51% recorded in 2011 but lower than the high of 86.35% from the nadir of 2007. So, by 2019, Mahmood Yakubu’s INEC had bled all the confidence that Attahiru Jega, his predecessor, had built in the electoral process. In 2023, he shamelessly pulverized what was left of it.

With elections to federal offices concluded on 25 February and to state offices on 18 March, election petition season is now formally open. On 22 March, the first landmark will be reached with the expiration of the 21-day deadline for filing petitions arising from the presidential election results announced on 1 March.

Already, every piece of evidence points to the likelihood that this will be no ordinary season. On March 3, 48 hours after the announcement of the results, the Court of Appeal ordered the INEC to grant access to the parties to inspect the materials generated from the presidential elections. Three days later, the order was served on the INEC. Instead of complying, the commission stone-walled.

On March 13, INEC chairman, the execrable Mahmood Yakubu, informed lawyers for the parties who demarched him at the INEC headquarters in Abuja, that he had nothing to hide before quickly reminding them that most of the documents that they wanted were in the states and not at the INEC Headquarters. As with all the acts of infamy to which this INEC chairman has become habituated, he said this with a straight face.

This decentralization of obfuscation is original but unlawful. Under the Constitution and the Electoral Act, Nigeria is one constituency for the presidential election and the INEC Chairman is the only returning officer. The idea that documents used in the election are in the custody of INEC states offices is quite simply nonsensical. It is his place to organize custody in such a manner that the standards of access to them is uniform and predictable. By sending the lawyers on an obstacle course through 36 states and the FCT, Mahmood makes manifest his design to frustrate election dispute resolution.

Livy Uzoukwu, the SAN leading the legal team for Labour Party’s Peter Obi, credits INEC’s stone-walling with forcing them to reduce the scope of their inspection of materials from 36 states to just nine. Even then, by March 16, they had granted the lawyers access to only two states.

In Nigeria, every election petition is heard by a panel of three, five or seven judges. Where they all don’t agree, the judges will decide by majority vote. To win, a party must have the votes of two judges out of three (first instance); three justices out of five (appeal) or four justices out of seven (Supreme Court). Where there is such disagreement, there will be dissents.

The heightened role of judges in elections is essentially a feature of the presidential system of government. In Nigeria, Kayode Eso handed down the first notable dissent in this field in the Supreme Court decision in Obafemi Awolowo’s challenge to the victory of Shehu Shagari in the 1979 presidential election. Six of the seven Justices, led by Chief Justice Atanda Fatayi-Williams, ruled that the elections were in “substantial compliance” with the law, but Eso, the junior Justice on the panel, filed a memorable dissent.

Sometimes, the decisions of the courts inexplicably diverge. Following elections in September 1983, Nigeria’s Supreme Court heard two cases arising respectively from the governorship elections in Anambra and Ondo States. The issues were broadly the same: the then ruling party, the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), was credibly accused of rigging the elections in both states, enabling the Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO) to announce NPN candidates as winners when they lost. In Anambra, the citizens mostly went back to their businesses.

In Ondo State, the citizens decided to make the state ungovernable by burning everything in sight. On December 30, 1983, the Supreme Court upheld the Anambra governorship election by a majority of six to one but invalidated the Ondo Governorship result by the same margin. Hours later, on the night of the same day, soldiers sacked the government. By the time the court issued its reasons on January 6, 1984, Maj-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari was already one week old as a military ruler.

It is not only in Nigeria that election courts can announce incomprehensible outcomes. In 2006, Uganda’s Supreme Court considered a petition by the opposition candidate, Kizza Besigye, against incumbent President, Yoweri Museveni. In its decision, the Court concluded that “there was non-compliance with the provisions of the Constitution, Presidential Elections Act and the Electoral Commission Act, in the conduct of the 2006 Presidential Elections”; that there was “disenfranchisement of voters by deleting their names from the voters register or denying them the right to vote” and that “the principle of free and fair elections was compromised by bribery and intimidation or violence in some areas of the country.” Nevertheless, Chief Justice Benjamin Odoki led three other judges in a majority of four to uphold the outcome in favour of Museveni.

Sometimes, the decisions in election petitions are dodgy. When it decided the election petition against the outcome of the December 2012 presidential election filed by then-opposition candidate, Nana Akuffo-Addo, on August 29, 2013, Ghana’s Supreme Court announced a majority of six against three in favour of upholding the declaration of President Mahama as the winner. Economist, George Ayittey, wrote that the announced decision was “bungled. There was an inexplicable 4-hour delay in announcing the verdict, fueling speculation that something fishy was going on behind the scenes. Then Justice Atuguba announced a six–three verdict dismissing the petition. A day later, the verdict was changed to 5-4.” In a study of the judgment published in 2014 under the title ‘The Burdens of Democracy in Africa: How Courts Sustain Presidential Elections’, late Nigerian lawyer, Bamidele Aturu, showed that five of the nine justices who sat on that election petition in fact ordered a partial or total rerun of the election. In effect, rather than the announced majority of six–three in favour of President Mahama, the verdict was in fact five-four against him.

More recently, miracles have occurred. In August 2017, Kenya’s Chief Justice, David Maraga, led the Supreme Court to strike down a presidential election in Africa for the first time. In May 2020, Malawi’s Supreme Court did the same. In Nigeria four months earlier, the Supreme Court on January 13, 2020, declared Hope Uzodinma governor of Imo state despite his having been returned fourth in the election.

What Nigeria’s Supreme Court does in 2023 will matter. Like the major parties, all actors in Nigeria’s election petition process have learnt to build “structures”. For the parties, their structures are in the infrastructure of election rigging, or what former governor of Ekiti State, Kayode Fayemi, once famously called the criminal network of “five gods and the godfather”, including the highest levels of INEC, the security services, thugs, and the judiciary. For INEC, it is in the ruling party and the power network of incumbency at the federal and state levels. For the judiciary, it is in the same mutual benefit network of incumbency in the various branches of government at various levels.

Election petitions have become a preoccupation of judges in Nigeria and around Africa and a defining process in public perception of the courts. In the past, they provided moments of high forensic and judicial drama. Increasingly, however, they have become performative rituals for sanctifying electoral burglary and celebrating judicial capture. The beneficiaries are the burglars and the judges. The best the victims can often expect to receive is a timorous Pontius Pilate mistaken as a valiant judge. In 2023, Nigeria’s judges can sculpt a different narrative.

A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Anger is a barren human emotion, vacant of logic, rhyme, and reason. It is the stuff of that uncritical, unthinking, and irrational section of the human interior. Anger does not follow thought, and thought does not follow anger.

Anger is the mitochondrion of the ‘’mobs’’. Sadly, this anger is misplaced, misdirected and mis-catalysed. The animus seems inspired by primordial schmaltz and not anything altruistic. Anger of which chief aim is to exact vengeance cannot change society but bring doom upon it.

I have been overwhelmed by concern over the heightened tension foisted on the nation partly by the declarations, imprudence, and miscues of two sides of the mob. There are always two sides to bigotry. Particularly concerning is the tension among Nigerians who have lived together in harmony for decades in Lagos state.

First, it is bad politics for anyone, particularly a non-native to make ‘’taking over Lagos’’ a refrain. ‘’We’ll take over Lagos’’ – is bad sloganeering. It is revolting, and naturally will provoke resistance. I believe the same resistance will be compelled if non-natives of Anambra, for instance, say they want to change the political order in the state.

The duelling mobs have been dutiful with divisive propaganda, which now appears to be pitting Nigerians against one another. Tired and enraging motifs like ‘’No man’s land’’ have been reintroduced into the public discourse. But Lagos, clearly, has aboriginal owners. It is the territorial heritage of the Yoruba.

This is distressing rhetoric, really. Lagos is a melting pot of cultures and people. It has been welcoming and accommodating of everyone. It is depressing that this lodestar among states is the subject of vicious barbs and back talks. The real wealth of Lagos is its diversity. It is essential that Nigerians cognise this fact and protect the peace and sanity of the state.

Second, it is important that Nigerians understand that the factotums of the brawling mobs do not represent any group. These are half-witted individuals who lack knowledge of history, direction, and constipated by anger. Let it be clear that they do not represent any ethnic group.

Third, it is dangerous and unacceptable to profile any Nigerian citizen for whatever reason. We are all Nigerians with mutually guaranteed rights under the constitution. We must make a departure from the old ways of reasoning and interrogating issues. There is a need for us to discard prejudices and put Nigeria's unity and Nigerians first in whatever we say and do.

I was among the very few writers who spoke against the profiling of the Fulani when speaking out earned you excoriation and cancellation, and if you come from my part of the country, a death sentence. In fact, the detained leader of IPOB did a broadcast calling for my beheading.

The bottom line is, we must be sensitive to Nigeria's unity, peace, and harmony. "One Nigeria" is not vacant of meaning. It must mean something to us. We must imbibe it, and it should reflect in our thinking, in what we say and do. Is what we are saying promoting peace, unity, and facilitating the healing of all Nigerians or is it deepening strife and tension?

We must understand the intricacies of governance and diversity and should not in any way become vectors of the social media contagion or soundboard for the noise, hate and prejudices of that ungoverned space. Nigeria is in our hands. The healing we all seek and the unity we all seek begin with every word we say.

Fourth, Nigerians must be mindful of the sort of rhetoric they promote. We cannot build a country on mutual hostilities. Hate and prejudice are the thoroughfare to Rwanda. It is troubling that the injudiciousness of the sparring mobs has dissolved into ethnic recriminations.

What some of those battering one another on the amphitheatres of ethnicity may not know is that the Yoruba and the Igbo are of the same ethnic phylum. Renowned scholars and historians like Adiele Afigbo and Samuel Johnson established this kinship which colonial politics of divide and conquer submerged.

As I wrote in ‘’Do the Igbo and Yoruba know they are sons of Oduduwa’’, the two groups have had established trade-links dating to the period before contact with the first Europeans. And they are known to share passion for industry; are convivial, accommodating and peace loving.

Also, there is no documented history of war between the Igbo and the Yoruba despite occupying the same “southern hemisphere”. In the precolonial times, wars among kingdoms and natives were common, but there is no recorded incident of battle between the clans and kingdoms of the two groups.

In language, they are both of the Kwa-group Niger-Congo origin.  The similarities between the Yoruba and the Igbo language are remarkable, if not uncanny, which point to an identical fount. We are too connected to be divided.

I condemn the violence, voter intimidation and harassment across the 31 states in the governorship elections. And I plead with all Nigerians to submit to peace and unity to build our nation and a brighter future for everyone.

By Fredrick Nwabufo, Nwabufo aka Mr OneNigeria is a media executive.

Between Saturday, February 25, 2023 when the presidential and national assembly elections were held in Nigeria and today, the mass media have been replete with calls for the next president to compose a government of national unity (GNU). The argument is that such a strategy could calm frayed nerves and create some measure of unity between winners and losers of elections.  

However, an overview of elections in Nigeria does not reveal the commitment of our politicians to national unity. What history seems to attribute to them is the propensity to always get into one office or the other only to perpetrate their hobby of primitive appropriation and accumulation of public funds. In which case, the call for unity government which is usually instigated by the political class is essentially to keep on course opportunities for their personal gains. 

For example, in 2003, when General Muhammadu Buhari the then presidential candidate of the defunct All Nigeria Peoples Party ANPP was at the middle of an election petition to claim his mandate, officials of his party were scrambling to share the few positions allocated to their party in the government of national unity instituted by the victorious PDP. The greedy officials neither put their presidential candidate into confidence nor did they follow the guidelines of the party for aligning with another party. The decision to be part of the so-called unity government was made by the party officials whose basic motivation was the material benefit they looked forward to from the arrangement. In 2007, many of those who accused President Olusegun Obasanjo of a third term ambition were leading politicians from outside the PDP who had hoped that the third term government would be that of national unity that would include them.  In 2011, opposition parties didn’t show much interest in Goodluck Jonathan’s proposed unity government but ample background work was done concerning the idea. 

One of the pillars of democracy is majority rule. Consequently, good democrats have no business in a government formed by a political party to which they do not belong. Except a political system provides for proportional representation in which seats in the legislature are awarded to political parties in proportion to their strength in an election, government of national unity is unnecessary. It is only in Nigeria where politicians seek to function as permanent state actors that those who lost elections always agitate for a government of national unity. After 24 years of continuous democratic rule, it is time for Nigerian politicians to grow up and allow the majority party to form a government which should be placed on its toes by a viable opposition. Otherwise, we shall continue to have a pseudo-democracy in which everyone bows to a ruling party so as to be appointed into some government position. It is for the same reason that the 9th national assembly under the guise of collaborative federalism functioned all through from the pocket of the executive.  

Luckily for our commercial politicians, the so-called victorious parties are always favourably disposed to the institution of a government of national unity because the acclaimed winners feel the way out is to placate owners of stolen mandate. Indeed, in many constituencies in the past, votes were swapped to make losers become winners while in some other locations, election results were simply procured for polling booths where voting did not happen. Following the failure to put a halt to election rigging, it will certainly be difficult to stop the agitation for government of national unity. It is true that smooth talkers who can fluently defend our bogus elections abound in the nation but such partisan orators often look at election rigging from a narrow perspective. Those who give pass marks to INEC and the election process often focus on the pictorial display of election materials arriving in different states in the country; orderly queuing and ballot casting in voting centres and the beautifully adorned conference centre where results are cosmetically finalized.

If the truth must be told, Nigerian elections have not been good. Our people should not allow themselves to be misled by the diplomatically coated reports of international election monitors and observers. What should always be noted is the unending caution which the same observers always put in an idiom that”the devil of Nigeria’s elections is in the details.” What this idiom means is that Nigerian elections look simple on the surface but the details are usually convoluted and problematic. Our elections are likely to remain knotty if we continue to overlook the fraudulent details of the collation of results that are hurriedly declared with fanfare. Of course if the right process is followed, we could easily move one step away from incessant and selfish calls for government of national unity after every election. Such a trend would ensure good elections which are more likely to produce visionary leaders that would initiate and implement good public policies capable of improving the living standards of the people

The point that is being made is that what can best unite a given society is good governance and not the struggle for power by politicians. This presupposes that those declared winners of elections must be prepared to bring on board only persons who can add value to governance. Whereas a new president is free to appoint some of his supporters into his government, such appointees must first and foremost be visibly capable of doing the job. Critical offices ought not to be used just for rewarding party supporters. A new president or governor must remember that many people who voted for them are not necessarily members of their party. In other words, being a member of the victorious party should essentially serve as an added advantage for appointing people. Governance is a tough task that requires the best hands, otherwise success may be hard to achieve.

In the case of heterogeneous societies such as Nigeria, the old order of emphasis on state of origin should change to a clear understanding of the expedience of good management of diverse cultures. One reason Nigeria wins more awards in sports than governance is because only the very best find their way into our sports teams while everyone no matter their visible deficiencies get into our governance teams. Today, Nigeria does not have a state which lacks strong hands, why not bring into government the best hands of every state as a double advantage that reduces the cry of marginalization and enhances the quality performance of officials? Nothing else can engender unity more than such an inclusive approach to governance which was in the first instance the framework which the federal principle in our constitution was designed to achieve.  

Nigeria had in the 1970s worked assiduously towards national unity by formulating strategic policies such as the National Youth Service Corps programme. Until quite recently, the NYSC served as tool for national unity and integration. But like many Nigerian policies, most of the lofty ideas of its founders have been greatly diluted. The federal character principle on its part has been politicised and poorly managed. In fact, the commission which was set up to ensure the smooth implementation of the principle by other societal institutions has itself been found wanting in upholding the same principle. This is where elected leaders should pay greater attention to because what the nation desires is unity among its disparate groups and not the class unity which the politicians harp upon. 

In summary, Nigeria is in dire of needof national development which can only be attained through the instrumentality of visionary leaders that are freely elected by voters. For this to happen, ruling parties must stop appointing partisan officials into INEC that is supposed to be an impartial umpire. The electoral process must be credible and not the charade we watched on national television during yesterday’s governorship and houses of assembly elections in well-known volatile are as like Lagos. Painfully, the credibility of our security agencies who had earlier read riot acts while claiming to be battle ready to stop all disruptions was rubbished.If this culture of electoral malpractices continues, government of national unity as a damage control strategy cannot help Nigeria to grow.

In 2014, Nigeria navigated a crucial corner in a supposed ‘democratization’ by having an opposition party win an incumbent president. The beautiful part of that story is that the incumbent president, a certain peaceful man called Goodluck Jonathan, decided not to contest his defeat, unlike many African rulers who lose an election, rewrite the result and imprison opposition leaders. Many scholars of democracy and democratisation mistook this instance of civility as evidence that democracy is consolidating in Nigeria. That is false. It is a dangerous assumption that can make us fail to perform the real tasks required to make Nigeria a democracy.

The truth is that Nigeria is not a democracy. And maybe it has never been. Nigeria came to being in 1914 through an amalgamation that did not truly happen. As Sir Clifford reported it, Lord Lugard was halfhearted about the project. He did not want to be trapped in the bureaucratic work of managing a truly integrated Nigeria, so he kept it loose and simple, so he can frequent Liverpool every weekend. The result of this diffidence is a country that lacked strong nationality and coherent statehood. Add to this ill conception the foundation of military dictatorship that further destroyed civility and regularity. Since 1999, Nigeria has evaded the bullet of a military takeover of government. But it has not evaded its autocracy and authoritarianism. Somehow, the military still rules the Nigerian state through its surrogates and culture.

Nigeria used to be described as a ‘hybrid democracy’ in the typology of democracy in the world. A hybrid democracy is one that has the forms of democracy but operates by the logic of authoritarianism. In such a political society, elections become a means of authorising one despot and not the other. No matter who wins an election in a hybrid democracy, the characteristics of state institutions are that they undermine the freedom and liberty of citizens. The competition and liberalisation required in a democracy are missing, replaced by political monopoly and coercion.

The shocking thing is that this characteristic remains even as the country advances in the technology of elections. Like the rest of the developing or transitioning countries of the world that have been seduced and captivated by the concept of democracy called ‘electoralism’, Nigeria has embraced ‘electoral democracy’, the democracy whose hallmark is competitive and periodic elections. Many people argue about the democracy-ness of electoral democracy with its restrictions on popular participation and acceptance of gross economic inequality. But even its limited merits are missing in Nigeria. The most important feature of electoral democracy is contestability which reflects in the simple fact that the opposition can always easily defeat the incumbent whenever the people are displeased by the performance of the incumbent.

No matter what else electoral democracy is, it is, as Robert Dahl pointed out decades ago, a system that forces those in political offices to respond to the preferences and expressions of citizens. As a form of representation, democracy enables the people who are outside political authority to influence what those in political offices do; how they use state resources. The chief tool of this control is free and fair elections. Elections are free and fair only if they are organized in a manner that the opposition can easily win. Free and fair election is not defined by the design and arrangement of ballot and the niceties of electoral management.

The most important things about elections are not about the votes. They are more about the working of state institutions. At the minimum, these institutions, like the police, the courts, the electoral management body, and state public service must be politically neutral. In simple language, if the people say they wanted the president or the governor out, the police, the courts, and the public service will not keep him in power. These institutions would have, through their organizing logic or evolution or structural character, become unusable to keep people in power. The political neutrality of state institutions and the liberality of the political environment to the extent that the people enjoy expansive civil and political and economic and social rights are the very necessary and sufficient conditions for democracy defined as polyarchy.

If these features are absent, like in Nigeria, then you are not a democracy even if the technology of your electoral system is sophisticated. If the governor of your state has prohibited political opponents from campaigning in the state and uses state institutions to arrest and incarcerate them before the vote, then you are not a democracy. If citizens can threaten other citizens with violence if they don’t vote for the incumbent and your police do not make arrests and protect those citizens to vote their preferences, you are not a democracy. If your electoral umpire can show open partisanship and rig the elections it is conducting through deliberate and audacious disregard for the fundamental rule that guarantees transparent vote count, then you are not a democracy. If your cultural leaders can wantonly employ culture and tradition to ensure that the people do not vote on the day of the election to suppress votes in areas that their preferred candidate cannot win, then you are not yet a democracy.

Some people may think this is half-full and not half-empty. So the narrative is that Rome was not built in a day. True. The democracies of the world evolved over time. But we are living in a global village where outsiders have access to the ingredients which the established democracies used to prepare the cuisine. So, we can also prepare the meal of democracy. But more than that, we have a problem that if we want to travel the path these democracies took, we need to invent wars and experience the social convulsions that rocked their societies many centuries ago. We cannot afford such anymore. Therefore, we must intentionally fast-track to democracy, not evolve to it.

One truth is that what we have in Nigeria today is not democracy. This is the reason the University of Gothenburg in its Verities of Democracy labelled Nigeria an ‘electoral autocracy’. We are not a democracy because our elections are not competitive. You cannot have competitive elections if the state is captured, and its institutions are functionally and ideologically committed to protecting the autocracy of the dominant political group. Until such institutions internalise the norms of neutrality and autonomy and operationalise such in the defence of the little citizens taking on the entrenched autocrats, you do not have a democracy yet.