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.

After the February 25 Presidential and National Assembly elections, now heavily disputed, Nigeria goes to the polls again on March 18, 2023 to elect Governors and members of state legislatures in 28 out of 36 states of the Federation. There would be no state elections in Kogi, Anambra, Ondo, Imo, Edo, Osun, Bayelsa and Ekiti which are in the off-cycle election belt. However, this weekend’s elections were meant to hold last Saturday, March 11, but the polls had to be rescheduled on account of the disputes that arose from the February 25 Presidential election and the orders given by the Court of Appeal acting as the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal. Three political parties – the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the Labour Party (LP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC), acting in self-defence in its case, had gone to court to seek permission to be allowed to inspect the materials used for the election by the Independent National Election Commission (INEC) which announced the Presidential candidate of the All Progressives’ Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as winner of the election with 8. 974, 726 million of total votes cast. The Presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubaar, and Mr. Peter Obi of the Labour Party had challenged the results as declared by INEC. The court ruled in their favour on Friday, March 3. By Tuesday, March 7, the ruling APC and its candidate, now president-elect, also sought the leave of court to have access to the election materials. INEC also approached the court requesting that it should vary the order it gave earlier permitting PDP, LP, to inspect election materials, by granting it leave to reconfigure the Bi-Modal Verification Accreditation System (BVAS) ahead of the Gubernatorial and State legislature elections scheduled for March 11.

Counsel to INEC had told the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal that their client would need a minimum of five days to reconfigure the BVAS. As it turned out, the two other matters were determined on Wednesday, March 8. The court granted INEC’s request to reconfigure the BVAS, but it did not rule that this should have any effect on the March 11 date. The Court granted APC its prayers. But in yet another matter, it refused to grant the Labour Party its request to inspect the INEC data base, and oversee the reconfiguration of the BVAS. On its own, after a review of the Court’s ruling, INEC announced that “it was far too late” for the reconfiguration of BVAS to be concluded within two days in over 170, 000 polling units nationwide. Consequently, the Commission rescheduled the Gubernatorial and state Assembly elections till March 18. INEC promised that it would obey the orders of court: grant the petitioners access to inspect election materials, and also upload data to its back-end server and make Certified True Copies of same available to all parties in the matter.

It is now election week again, as Nigerians are expected to troop out this Saturday to participate in state elections. They would be doing so against the background of the drama generated by the elections of February 25. As various international observers have pointed out: Chatham House, Ambassador Mark Green, Ambassador Johnnie Carson, the US Observer Mission, Financial Times, Bloomberg, New York Times, South Africa’s Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), Reuters, YIAGA Africa, The Guardian UK, BBC, Chinese News Agency, Washington Post, Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room, the African Union Election Observation Mission to Nigeria, ECOWAS, EU, UN, and the West African Elders Forum (WAEF) among others, the emergent consensus was that whereas the people of Nigeria showed much zeal and determination towards the polls, the entire exercise fell short of the people’s expectations. In other words, INEC disappointed the people. I have already offered a catalogue of the sheer incompetence and poor performance put up by INEC in an earlier commentary (see “Nigeria: February 25 and the Aftermath,”ThisDay, Tuesday, March 7) read that here. Things have gone so bad that in fact the People’s Democratic Party led by its Presidential candidate and other party leaders had to stage a protest from the party’s headquarters to the Headquarters of INEC, on Monday, March 6. They asked for a cancellation of the election, and submitted a protest letter. A week later, the Labour Party in a statement issued by its Chief Spokesperson, Dr Yunusa Tanko, is also threatening to call out its supporters on a peaceful protest to challenge INEC’s refusal to obey the order of Court to allow the party to inspect election materials. Tanko insists that the court order was duly served on INEC and a reminder was also sent to it. But whereas INEC is busy reconfiguring the BVAS, it has ignored other court orders. It has failed to keep its promise. Other political parties are aggrieved. It must be noted that on three previous occasions since 1999 that elections were postponed, Nigeria usually cited either security or logistics reasons: 2011, 2015, 2019, but in 2023, INEC’s excuse is that it has to reconfigure its equipment!

The biggest calamity in Nigeria’s democratic process this time around is the embarrassing conduct of the electoral umpire. The people have lost trust in INEC. The institution suffers a credibility crisis. The worst thing that can happen to any public institution is to end up in the eyes of the same people it is established to serve as a fibbing, clumsy, unreliable institution. Between February 25 and now, INEC has broken virtually all the promises it made to the people of Nigeria, including the ones its Chairman rolled out for effect on the floor of Chatham House in London! INEC’s much-trumpeted confidence in the deployment of technology as enabled by the law and its own guidelines has been shown to be nothing more than an exercise in hypocrisy. On February 25, results from polling units were transmitted to the INEC portal called iREV, but not Presidential election results from the same polling units. More than a week after the elections, INEC could not fully load results unto its portals. Many voters could not get their Permanent Voter’s Cards, the same cards that have been sighted in bushes, forests, in the hands of foreigners and shadowy apartments across the country. INEC could not distribute its own PVCs! The Court of Justice Obiora Egwuatu has now ruled, March 9, in favour of two persons: Kofoworola Olusegun and Wilson Allwell that they should be allowed to vote with their Temporary Voter’s Cards (TVCs), but although the ruling is in personam, the matter having not been filed in a representative capacity, INEC says it will appeal the Federal High Court ruling. Since the return to democratic rule in 1999, no other electoral process has been this confusing and uncertain.

Those who are familiar with the subject argue that the postponement of the state elections alone comes with “staggering economic loss.” It could also harm voter enthusiasm and voter turn-out rates. The perception that the elections could be rigged at will is a major issue. Galaxy Backbone, Nigeria’s ICT services provider owned by the Federal Government, has confirmed that it had to fend off over 200 cyberattacks during the Presidential and National Assembly elections. Perception is important in any electoral process. Even IT experts believe that INEC is lying when it says it wants to reconfigure BVAS – the same INEC that cannot figure out whatever “technical glitches” that sabotaged its operations more than two weeks after the fact.

Every aggrieved party has been advised to go to the courts, and seek redress through legal and constitutional means. President Muhammadu Buhari has also expressly declared that there is no plan to annul the Presidential election – that is impossible, we are in a democracy - not under military rule. What anyone can hold on to is the general admonition that INEC should by now have carried out a thorough review of the elections of February 25, to understand what worked, what did not, what went amiss, and to learn the relevant lessons and ensure that these are used to deliver a much better process on March 18. But do we ever learn in Nigeria – a country where amnesia is a national malady and rascality seems at once genetic and contagious? INEC is expected to rebuild the people’s confidence. It is in the best interest of everyone that INEC succeeds on Saturday, March 18. The errors of February 25 have pushed the people to a corner where they are poised for war in various parts of the country. The people are determined more than before to defend their votes. Gubernatorial and state legislature elections are mainly local elections, and understandably, they are invested with a higher dosage of emotionalism. The tension in the country is at an all-time high. The thugs who snatched ballot boxes two weeks ago may find that it won’t be easy to do so this week. The battle will be tough and fierce in some of the states: Edo, Delta, Enugu, Abia, Rivers, Kaduna, Kogi, Oyo, and especially Lagos.

As was the case in the February 25 elections, ethnicity, religion, power and territory would be big issues. Against all odds, after the vote count in that process, Labour Party which was accused of not having a party structure ended up with more than 25% of the votes in 12 states including the Federal Capital Territory, with 6 winners in the Senate, and 34 in the House of Representatives, coming third in the Presidential Election, which the party says was rigged against it. The Labour Party would seek to consolidate on its February 25 election victories this week. Delta, Enugu, Abia, Rivers, Kaduna, Benue would be major battle grounds for the party. And Lagos in particular, where the Labour Party won majority votes and would want to repeat the feat. The President-elect was Governor of Lagos for two terms. He is the Godfather of the ruling APC in Lagos. To beat him and his party’s incumbent Governor in Lagos is not impossible as the Labour Party has shown, but to do so twice will be quite a feat. And that is why there has been so much desperation in the campaigns in Lagos in the lead up to March 18. The APC has played the ethnic card against the candidate of the Labour Party in a most vicious manner. His offence is that his mother is Igbo. He is also married to an Igbo woman. His grandmother is also said to be Igbo. And he bears Patrick. He bears Chinedu. He speaks Igbo. The ethnic irridentists of Lagos politics have been swearing that Lagos belongs to the Yoruba, it is not a no-man’s-land, and anyone with a small drop of Igbo blood would not be allowed to become Governor. They forget that the Rhodes-Vivour family has been a Yoruba family in Lagos for more than five generations. And those who voted for the Labour Party in Lagos State on February 25 were not necessarily Igbos. They cut across all ethnic groups, and they were probably mostly Yorubas. Those who are targeting Igbos must desist from doing so. They must remember Rwanda, where the politics of ethic hate resulted in a massive blow-out. If they don’t know where Rwanda is, let them remember how ethnic politics catalyzed Nigeria’s civil war.

And for the benefit of those who think Igbo votes would be frustrated by burning markets dominated by Igbos in Lagos, I draw their attention to the Lagos Area Council election of 1950. As reported in the Daily Times of Wednesday, October 18, 1950 to wit: “ELECTION RESULTS: Demo-Labour Alliance Wins: 18 Seats Against Area Council’s 6”. The Demo-Labour Market Alliance won 18 out of the 24 seats in the new Lagos Town Council. Out of these, there were non-Yoruba winners: Nduka Eze in Ward C, Mbonu Ojike in Ward D, Anyiam F. and Gogo, C.N in Ward F. Before then, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, an Igbo man represented Lagos between 1947 and 1951 in the Legislative Council of Nigeria. It was in this same area called Lagos that Emmanuel Ebubedike from Ozubulu in present-day Anambra State won election in the First Republic to represent Ajeromi-Badagry-Ifelodun in the Western Region House of Assembly. Each time I cite this example, I am reminded that it was Ebubedike who first snatched the Mace in the Western House on May 22, 1962 and turned it into a weapon of assault. He didn’t grab the mace because he was Igbo. Everyone had literally lost their head in the Western Region on that occasion.

In more recent times, a certain Oghene Emma Egho represented Amuwo-Odofin Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives on the platform of the PDP in 2015. The truth is that Lagos is a cosmopolitan melting pot of cultures, tropes and influences and its diversity and accommodative, liberal temper is part of the city’s mystique and essence. It has been reported that some acclaimed Lagos “omo oniles” – the self-styled land-owning families of Lagos are beginning to revoke lease agreements to remind non-Lagosians that Lagos belongs to its indigenous people! It has also been reported that some traditional rulers in Ibeju-Lekki are withdrawing traditional titles that they had conferred on some Igbos in their quarters. All of this just because a Yoruba son whose mother happens to be Igbo wants to be Governor? Absolutely ridiculous. There are no illegitimate children in Africa! It is a good thing that Governor Babajide Sanwoolu, the incumbent Lagos Governor has publicly decried ethnic politics. Other stakeholders in Lagos politics should do the same. The President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, should step forward also to let everyone know that the people of Lagos, both indigenes and non-indigenes have the right to vote for the leaders of their choice.

The security agencies have their work cut out for them. They were conspicuously ineffectual on February 25. The police have been given money and equipment and the necessary support they asked for from President Muhammadu Buhari. The stakes may have been high on February 25. They would be higher on March 18. It goes without saying that the international community is watching. Nigeria’s success is critical for the stability of neighbouring countries and the larger project of democracy, good governance and accountability in African states. INEC and other agencies involved in #NigeriaDecides2023 should not turn Nigeria into the laughing stock of Africa.

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Nigeria held its Presidential and National Assembly elections on Saturday, February 25, 2023 across all the 36 states of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory. It was the most competitive election since the country’s return to democratic rule in 1999, the seventh in the cycle. It was also the election with the lowest turn-out: just about 25. 2 million voters voted in that election. Close to one million votes were voided, the declared winner won just about 8.8% of the total votes cast out of 93.4 million registered voters, with a collated figure of 87.2 million registered voters. Many commentators have attributed the low voter turn-out to voter suppression, voter intimidation and the scarcity of money and fuel, although those may not have been serious reasons for voter apathy. The people were enthusiastic, but they were disappointed by INEC’s gross incompetence.

In 1999, voter turn-out was 52.3 %; in 2003, over 63 million voters showed up– that is 69.1% turn out in Nigeria’s Presidential and National Assembly elections of that year; in 2007, the reported figure was 57.5%; and in 2011, 53.7%, with the loser in that election - General Buhari getting as many as a little over 15 million votes. In 2015, the turn-out figure dropped to 43.7%; later in 2019, 34. 75%, The bigger point to be made is that Nigeria’s 2023 Presidential election has had the worst turn-out in the whole of Africa in the last decade. In 2017, Rwanda recorded a 98.15% voter turn-out, which was considered the highest in the world.

What we can hold on to is that whereas Nigerians were very enthusiastic about the National Assembly and Presidential elections of February 25, 2023, there were great apprehensions among the people which hindered the eventual outcome of the process. Nigerians now have a President-elect in the person of Senator/Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), with the lowest margin of victory in contemporary Nigerian history. The total number of valid votes in this election is not even up to the total number of votes won by just two candidates in previous elections. But what the law states is that the man with the majority of votes and the highest number of votes in two thirds of the 36 states of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory is to be declared winner. Section 134 of the 1999 Constitution which addresses this is already a matter of contention in both the public domain and the courts. It would be interesting to see how in the course of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunals, this diminishes or enhances the county’s jurisprudence in that regard.

But for now, what we know is that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has declared Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the APC, winner of the Presidential election of February 25. INEC did not also waste time in giving the Certificate of Return to the APC candidate. We have not seen the same haste with the other elections, the National Assembly elections of February 25 and their legislative winners. None of them has received the Certificate of Return the following day, or nine days after. But the President-elect got his post-haste. He has also since embarked on victory laps to key political figures including the President in his home state of Daura, his wife, supported by other APC wives has visited Mrs Aisha Buhari in Aso Villa, and to cap it all, the President-elect has led a delegation to the Oba of Lagos just to say thank you. Tinubu has since moved into the Defence House in Abuja, the holding bay for a President in waiting. By now, he would be receiving daily security briefings from all relevant agencies of state. In terms of optics, Tinubu himself is already hob-nobbing with the international diplomatic community. He is visiting local traditional rulers and taking messages from foreign diplomats. He has done a victory lap of sorts to Lagos and no one should be surprised if he goes to all principal Yoruba towns and kings. He is playing a game of self-affirmation, laying concrete beneath his “Emilokan” (it’s my turn”) declaration. He has not only managed to win the election; he is already seeking to consolidate the gain by playing a fast game ahead of others. He is striving to establish himself as master and owner of the game.

I think I have a fair idea of what is playing out. The last time I ran for elective office – in the 2019 Gubernatorial race, I recall some wise persons in our camp, telling us at the time, that the way Nigerian politics is played, it is better to win the election and allow other parties and candidates to be the ones to complain. While they are preparing to go to court, you take charge of the victory and take the game to another level. Resort to the tribunal and the courts is constitutionally provided for as the place of last resort for aggrieved politicians, but the received wisdom in Nigerian politics is that if you know your way, that could be difficult to enforce at the gubernatorial level and even more difficult at the Presidential level. Nigerian politicians seem to have this implicit confidence that if you know how the system works, it would be difficult to lose the certificate of return that has been issued to you. The matter is further compounded by the fact that election matters are sui generis. This is a euphemism for the fact that in an election matter, the verdict can go in any direction.

The heavy burden of proof is on the plaintiff to prove that he has been cheated. The courts have a presumption of regularity in favour of the respondent and the electoral commission. The test in election matters is substantial compliance. It is partly why some of the election cases that go all the way to the Supreme Court always produce strange outcomes. In Presidential matters, it would be recalled that the Nigerian Supreme Court has never up-turned any Presidential dispute from Awolowo vs. Shagari to Atiku vs. Jonathan and after. Their Lordships of the Supreme Court always find a way of ruling in favour of the man who already has the Certificate of Return! The ink was yet to dry on the ballot papers before INEC produced and handed over the Certificates of Return for the Presidential election to the President-elect and the Vice-President-Elect as announced for the All Progressives Congress (APC).

The general impression, among Nigerians, with the sole exception of the supporters of the ruling party now declared elected, is that Nigeria’s electoral commission simply keyed into the President-elect’s “emilokan message”. Whereas the technological innovation in form of BVAS – the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System and iREV - the INEC results reporting portal -was supposed to ensure transparency and accountability in form of real-time loading of results from polling units, on election day, the same BVAS process as provided for in Section 60 of the Electoral Act and Clause 38 of INEC’s own Guidelines failed on election day. To be specific, it worked seamlessly for National Assembly elections but failed to upload Presidential elections. The same device, in the same locations, in the same elections conducted on the same day chose to behave in a discriminatory manner due, I suspect, to human error or human failure. But INEC places the blame conveniently on “technical glitches” arising from the fact that this was not an off-cycle election but a general election. The people were assured that the glitches would be fixed by the engineers. Nine days later, INEC was yet to load the results from over 176, 800 polling units for the Presidential election on its portal, the engineers have not fixed anything, and yet they have declared a winner of the Presidential election. It is difficult to dismiss the aggrieved Nigerians who have blamed INEC for imposing something in the shape of “election magic” on Nigerians on February 25. The major political parties that lost out are on their way to the courts. They have asked for the leave of court to inspect INEC documents to put evidence together. The People’s Democratic Party has staged “a black uniform” demonstration in Abuja to show the party’s displeasure.

But would this make any difference? Nigeria is a funny country. Heavens don’t fall around here when people’s expectations are not fulfilled. Not in normal, everyday life. Not during elections. Expectations die daily in Nigeria. The truth is: the people are used to that reality. They hem and haw when they are aggrieved. The same people would later move on, and behave as if nothing is amiss. The psychology of the Nigerian to adapt to everything and anything is one of the major wonders of the world. The APC strategists know this. They believe it. It is why they can beat their chests and boast with the authority of the courts. They have not only been declared elected, they have assumed the authority of the courts. Meet us there! Their confidence is typically Nigerian. In reality, there is no truly independent institution in Nigeria. When you look deeply enough, you’d find some magic lying underneath.

It is okay for the international community to urge Nigerians to seek legal and necessary means to resolve disputes. That is the standard script in these matters as a way of maintaining peace and order. It is even more important to prevent a country of over 200 million from descending into chaos. Nigeria is so delicate and so strategic, you can do just about anything, people can hurt you as they wish, and no matter how, everyone would still beg you to calm down. Hence, the aggrieved political parties are expected to calm down. Only three of the parties are openly aggrieved by the way out of 18 political parties: the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Labour Party (LP) and the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP). Only three parties are talking of going to court. Other aggrieved parties like Omoyele Sowore’s African Action Congress (AAC) have been heard making small noises, but the majority of the other parties, like the Social Democratic Party (SDP) seem to have taken a pragmatic view of the matter. Nobody should be surprised if some of the other smaller political parties show up in court to support the President-elect, and argue that there was nothing wrong with the elections of February 25. No one should be surprised either if INEC finds ways of blocking the access of the aggrieved parties to critical data and evidence.

Those who will be hurt, those to whom Nigeria has happened, after a manner of speech, are those Nigerians who got brutalized before, during and after the election (I hope Mrs Efedi Bina Jennifer’s face has healed – she got stabbed in the face on election day in Surulere, Lagos), those whose votes were never counted because BVAS failed or INEC officials threw away their papers into the bush, or simply refused to upload results, those whose votes were set ablaze because hoodlums seized ballot boxes and set fire to them, those who voted, heard the results at the polling units, only to hear INEC Headquarters later announcing a different set of results. It must be painful to such persons to be told that their choice was determined by “technical glitches”. And now, four days to another round of elections – INEC seeks the leave of court to reconfigure its BVAS. What INEC could not do for months, and in nine days, it wants to do in 4 days? Candidly, no be juju be that? The biggest loser in the just concluded election is of course INEC. For failing the people, it failed as an institution. It lost the people’s trust and confidence. Whatever it does going forward, the people would be full of doubts. I pity Professor Yakubu Mahmood, the INEC Chairman. Whatever reputation he may have had before now, has been thrown out of the window. He won’t be the first INEC Chairman that would end up on the wrong side of history. But he may end up as the most vilified, and go down in history as the man who presided over the most competitive and most disputed elections in Nigerian history since the return to civilian rule in 1999. How does he hope to move about distinguished company when all this is won and lost?

He has now promised to conduct better elections on March 11 – the Gubernatorial and Houses of Assembly elections. The stakes are lower. If the technology – BVAS and iREV - works smoothly on March 11, that would be solid proof that February 25 was truly an exercise in witchcraft. Both ways: INEC and Yakubu Mahmood will lose. It does not matter what they do on Saturday, March 11. They have failed woefully in the court of public opinion. Besides, the security agencies were nowhere to be found on election day. In their presence, unscrupulous voters suppressed and intimidated voters, snatched ballot boxes, set ballot boxes ablaze – most of the reports indicated that the security agencies stood arms akimbo and did nothing. In one report, the police also helped ad hoc INEC officials to thumb-print ballot papers. The police have not reported any arrests nor have they come forward to disown the men who wore police uniforms. The same police collected money and equipment from President Buhari to ensure a hitch-free election. The only security agency that showed up on election day was the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) whose officials arrested persons who moved money about to buy votes or tried bank transfers to influence voters. The only news that came from the Civil Defence was that its officials had an accident on their way to a polling booth. That must have been due to careless driving because there was no traffic on the roads on election day! General Lucky Irabor boasted that soldiers would give anybody who tried to disrupt the elections, “a bloody nose”. Nobody saw the soldiers on duty!

What next for Nigeria, then? I believe it is a good thing to test our laws – the Electoral Act, the 1999 Constitution and INEC guidelines to deepen our democracy and jurisprudence. But I do not think that the courts would up-turn the Presidential election. Judges are also citizens. They know how the game is played. They will not allow themselves to be used as scapegoats when other institutions of state have failed. What we all can hold on to is Bola Tinubu’s promise of conciliation, unity and his agenda for prosperity. We may not have paid close enough attention to his agenda for “restored hope” before now, but it is time to do so. We must take charge of the future, and define for the President-elect what Nigeria needs going forward. Anyone thinking and dreaming that he would relinquish that certificate of return, which he says he regards, as “a world cup trophy” should stop dreaming. For Nigeria, the days ahead are bound to be even more interesting. I wait to be proven wrong.