The year is almost over. The year 2024 is ending. In different parts of the world the countdown has begun, with elaborate fireworks heralding the beginning of a New Year 2025. The year 2024 was eventful. And we could all mostly look back and wonder how it passed so quickly.  It was a year of winners and losers, as is the case with every year and as it would be with the years to come, reminding us all of the inexorable march of fate and time. We live. We die. We grow. We wither. We fall ill. We heal.  Man is at the mercy of nature and the environment, his own exertions and his imagination. But whatever is anyone’s individual fortune, life goes on all the same, hanging on to the thread of optimism. Humanity is sustained by the resolve that man, having positioned himself as the master of the universe, can always learn, do better and surpass his own expectations.  

2024 was the year of elections - held at national, general and local levels in more than 100 countries of the world with far-reaching implications for politics and cultural relations at various levels. Elections were held in some of the most populous countries including India, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Russia, Bangladesh and the United States, with a total of about four billion eligible voters, about half of the world’s population, and up to 1.7 billion actually turning out to cast their ballots in all the continents. This clearly confirms the continuing strength of the democratic ideal, or the popularity of democracy, but observed patterns differed from one part of the world to the other. For example, most incumbent parties lost their popular standing even if they retained power as in France, South Korea, India, or to start close to home, South Africa, where the ruling African National Congress (ANC) lost the majority status it had maintained since the end of apartheid rule in 1994 due in part to growing disenchantment with the ANC and deep-seated divisions within the party which saw former President Jacob Zuma being a decisive factor, with his breakaway MK party. 

Other notable elections in Africa included that of Tunisia in October which brought President Kais Saied back to power with a low voter turn-out of 29%, the lowest since the Revolution. In Rwanda, President Paul Kagame won a fourth term in office in a curious reminder of how African leaders try to sit tight in office beyond constitutional term limits. He manipulated the Rwandan Constitution to remain in power. In Algeria, in September, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune was re-elected with 94.7 percent of the vote.  Earlier in April, Togo held its parliamentary elections. The ruling Union for the Republic, won 108 of the 113 seats to tighten President Faure Gnassingbe’s hold on power. The situation was the same in Chad in May with President Mahamat Idriss Deby as winner. In Mozambique, in October, the FRELIMO party which had ruled the country since 1975, also held on to power declaring 47-year-old Daniel Chapo as President. The country subsequently degenerated into chaos and protests. The main opposition leader, Eduardo Mondlane fled into exile and has sworn to get himself into power on inauguration day on January 15, although it remains unclear how he intends to achieve that. The elections in Mozambique were believed to have been rigged and manipulated. There was more positive news, however, from Senegal, Botswana, Namibia, and Ghana. In Senegal in March, Bassirou Diomaye Faye won 54% of the Presidential votes just 10 days after he was released from prison. Senegal’s story was a demonstration of the power of the people.  

In Namibia’s general election, Dec 3, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, incumbent Vice President, and member of the ruling SWAPO party, was declared winner, making her Namibia’s first female President, thus adding to the number of women in Africa who have served as President: Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (Liberia), Samia Suluhu Hassan (Tanzania), Joyce Hilda Banda (Malawi) and Sahle-Woek Zewde (Ethiopia). In Ghana, President John Dramani Mahama defeated the ruling party’s candidate, incumbent Vice President Mahamud Bawumia, who in a manner reminiscent of Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan’s gesture in 2015, conceded defeat even before the results were announced by the country’s electoral commission.  Senegal and Ghana are arguably two of the most stable democracies in Africa.  But whatever successes may have been recorded with democracy in Africa in the year 2024 was sadly abbreviated by the spectre of democratic retreat and the return of military rule in Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Sudan and Guinea. This has disrupted the political order in West Africa.  ECOWAS, the regional economic bloc has also been diminished with the declared exit of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, now forming an Alliance of Sahel States (AES).  In July 2024, the military junta in Burkina Faso further extended their stay in power by another five years. As ECOWAS prepares for its 50^thanniversary in 2025, it remains a divided body, and the region, an emerging landscape for proxy conflicts between major powers: Russia, France, China and the United States. 

In other parts of the world, from India to France, India, Japan and Britain, voters voted for change with concerns about leadership and the economy as major issues. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party, the BJP, may have survived in India, but not with a majority. Modi’s party had to form a coalition government. Elections led to riots in Georgia. In South Korea, former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s frustration with the domineering presence of an opposition coalition in parliament led him to impose a martial law. The people rebelled.  In Japan, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party also lost its majority status in parliament. In Britain in July, the British voted out the Conservatives, and gave the centre-left Labour Party a landslide victory. In France, Austria, Romania, the European Parliament and elsewhere we also saw the rise of either far-right or far-left tendencies lending the politics of 2024 a toga of anti-immigration sentiments and nationalism if not isolationism. In France, the government collapsed at a point. In Germany, the Chancellor, Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote. But perhaps the most impactful election in the world in 2024, was that of the United States which brought President Donald Trump back to power. Trump survived two assassination attempts, and went on to win a landslide victory. He and the Republicans regained power. President Joe Biden had to step down for Vice President Kamala Harris who put up a valiant and courageous fight, but not enough to dislodge Trump’s nationalistic, America First rhetoric. Given America’s status as a superior power in the world, Trump’s Presidency would be a major determinant of global politics in 2025. Trump has promised to impose trade tariffs and sanctions on not just China, Mexico and Canada, but literally the whole world. He wants to take back the Panama Canal. He wants to buy Greenland. Democracy survived and thrived in 2024, but the global outlook was bumpy.

Nigeria marked the 25^th anniversary of its return to democratic rule. The people’s reflection was one of mixed blessings. There may have been gains in terms of the democratic process, but Nigeria’s democracy has also produced sharp divisions within the polity, and the old fault lines of nepotism, religion and ethnicity are far from disappearing. In the Gubernatorial elections held in Edo State and Ondo state, the country’s challenges with its leadership recruitment process were writ large. In Edo state, the incumbent ruling party in the state, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) lost despite having a more accomplished candidate in the person of Asue Ighodalo. Analysts of the Edo state election alleged that the PDP lost to the all-conquering Federal Might of the All-Progressives Congress (APC) in power at the centre. In Ondo State, by the same token, it could not have been imagined that the APC would lose power to the PDP. Notably, incumbent political parties won overwhelmingly in all the states where local government elections were conducted in 2024. Twenty-five years after the return to democratic rule, Nigerian politicians remain set in their ways, with little evidence that anyone has learnt any lessons. This has prompted demands from civil society groups that indeed ahead of the 2027 elections, Nigeria’s electoral framework, a permanent work in progress, would have to be further amended.  For a long time to come, the character of Nigerian politics would remain umbilically linked to the character of the people themselves. Not even the traditional institutions are spared, as seen in the interplay of law, community and politics in the city of Kano with the reinstatement of Emir Sanusi Lamido Sanusi as the Sarkin Kano. The city became divided, with two brothers laying claim to the same throne. 

But beyond power play, perhaps the major concern in Nigeria in 2024 was the general insecurity in the country: physical, economic, and geographical. The government was wont to claim that the spate of kidnappings, banditry and random violence had reduced under its watch, but 2024 was perhaps the year that the pangs of hunger hit the average Nigerian most. The dynamic in the Nigerian economy resulted in high interest rates, unemployment, no money in the banks and the people’s pockets, with more people sliding into poverty.  More than 31 million people, by official estimates, suffered from acute food insecurity.  The figure was probably much higher as the Nigerian economy, inflation at over 34% by November, became a palliatives-economy. Many died while struggling for free food, with the year ending with the death of about 115 persons who lost their lives in Ibadan, Okija and Abuja in food stampedes. The gap between the poor and the rich couldn’t have been wider. Nonetheless, one major winning story of 2024 was the coming on stream of the much-anticipated Dangote Refinery. The Refinery is billed to produce 650, 000 barrels of fuel per day helping to address the problem of energy security, and foreign exchange savings in the country. But the Nigerian middle class had shrunk so much further, that the pump price of fuel, at over N1,000 per litre, was one of the sources of agony for Nigerians in 2024. 

It may be said all things considered, whatever agony or deprivation Nigerians may have gone through in 2024, this was nothing compared to the threat to global peace on the international scene. With the October 7, 2023 escalation of hostilities between Israel and the Hamas in Gaza, that part of the world has known no peace. Its people are victims of one of the worst humanitarian crises in the last decade. Over 40, 000 persons have lost their lives.  Throughout 2024, the world watched as Israel continued with its campaign of total annihilation, and by the end of the year, the conflict had engulfed the entire region. Israel has had to fight on many fronts: the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and even Iran, raising fears of the possibility of World War III. The much-anticipated world war did not happen, but the Middle East remains a zone of horror. The fall of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad on December 8, merely added fuel to the crisis. Israel has been on the offensive as it seeks to take advantage of the uncertainty in Syria to establish itself as the dominant power in the region. Israel has reduced Hezbollah, more or less eliminated Hamas and virtually taken control of parts of Syria. Thus, effectively in 2024, Israel managed to shut down Iran’s Axis of Resistance. The Russian-Ukraine war continues, and in all the theatres of war, the victims are the people. Global peace is disrupted, the impact of the disruptions is felt thousands of miles away. Global peace hangs on a balance; the world tetters on the brink. It was also the year that the economic cooperation group -BRICS admitted four new members including Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates, as part of the move by the group to create an alternative global payment system, and to change the existing global order.  NATO admitted a new member, Sweden in March 2024, bringing its membership number to 32. 

For happier stories in 2024, we probably should look in other directions, sports for example. France hosted the Paris Olympics, and delivered to global delight one of the most memorable Olympics in modern times. The Nigerian contingent did not win medals at the main Olympics, due to the usual stories of mismanagement and sloppiness, forgetting to register Favour Ofili for the 100 metres race and one of our athletes – cyclist Ese Lovina Ukpeseraye- having to borrow a bicycle from the German team, but the D’Tigress, Nigeria’s women’s basketball team reached the quarter finals, the first African basketball team to do so at the Olympics. The team’s coach Rena Wakama was named the best female basketball coach at the games. Nigeria’s main moments at the Olympics were later recorded in the Paralympics with the stunning performance of the Nigerian contingent winning a total of seven medals. Folashade Oluwafemiayo won gold medals in para-power lifting, while Eniola Bolaji, 18 years old, became the first African to win a medal in para-badminton.  It was also the year of Elizabeth Osoba, Nigeria;’s first female boxing world champion. Nor would anyone forget in a hurry the heroism of Ademola Lookman and his phenomenal achievements. He was crowned the 2024 CAF African Footballer of the Year. In May, he scored a hat trick to win the UEFA Europa League for Atalanta beating Bayer Leverkusen. He was shortlisted for the Ballon d’Or, finishing 14^th on the final list. Internationally, it was also the year of Max Verstappen who secured his fourth consecutive title in Formula One Grand Prix. It was also the year of Rafael Nadal, winner of 22 Grand Slam titles. He retired in November, one of the greats who played tennis in the modern era.  Other standout sporting champions of 2024 include Rodri (Ballon d’Or), Aitana Bonmati, (Ballon d’Or), Lamine Yamal, Vinicius Junior (FIFA Men’s Player of the Year), Keely Hodgkinson, Barbra Banda, and Carlo Ancelotti. 

For many Nigerians, it was by all means an exciting year in entertainment. Nigerian artistes: Davido, Wizkid, Burna Boy, Asake, Ayra Starr, Tems, Rema and others at every turn placed Nigeria’s name on the global map. In filmmaking, Femi Adebayo, with two movies, Jagun Jagun and Seven Doors stretched the scope of possibilities and creativity in Nollywood. David Oriakhi was brilliant with the film, The Weekend. Funke Akindele ended the year on a good note with her exciting film, Everybody Loves Jenifa, a strong reminder of the enormous value and potential of Nigeria’s creative sector. In Lagos, Bolanle Austen-Peters Terra Kulture, remained the go-to venue for cultural revival. All said, people may have experienced vastly different fortunes in the year 2024, but for surviving the year, we are all winners.  What a year! What a relief! Here is to a new year of hope and better promise…