My editor has told me that the Electoral Act forbids media organizations from publishing news or analysis about elections on Election Day that can be interpreted as tendentious. That, in my opinion, is a strange provision that violates the very spirit of democracy, but every country has a right to fashion its electoral laws in accordance with its peculiarities. 

Well, since I can’t write about electoral politics on Election Day, I’ve chosen to return to an old pastime: comparing America (where I live) and Nigeria (where I was born and raised) and pointing out intriguing parallels and differences.

It is all too easy to look at the United States and be led to suppose that it is impervious to internal divisions because it prefixes the adjective “united” to its name—or to think that it’s immune from the sorts of disabling regional rivalries that we associate with our interminably feuding societies. 

Even though the regional divide in America is less contentious than Nigeria’s, there are nonetheless strong, if subdued, provincial jealousies between the American North and the American South that have been bubbling to the surface in the last few years.

Just a few weeks ago, for example, conservative firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene who represents a Georgia Congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives that’s not far from where I live suggested that the United States should have a “national divorce” along more or less regional lines. A few days later, she added that when Democrats move to Republican states, they shouldn’t be allowed to vote until after five years.

Most Southern states tend to be Republican, and most northern states tend to be Democratic, although this is an oversimplification. 

Well, Greene’s ideas aren’t as unusual as they sound. As Richard Kreitner, who wrote the book Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America’s Imperfect Union, told The Atlantic on Feb. 23, “No golden age of American unity exists that you can point to and say, ‘That’s when we were united.’ Even back then, people were issuing threats of secession when they were out of power, and then defending the Union as perpetual and inviolable once they had the power. Thomas Jefferson does this famous turnaround. In 1798, he mulls whether to threaten secession because he doesn’t like Adams’s administration. Then he wins the election of 1800, and says, ‘We must hold the Union together at any cost!’ The people backing Adams now proposed secession.”

The more I get to know about this, the more I find parallels between America and Nigeria. The first indication I got of how the North and the South perceive each other as two separate nations within a country was when, in 2005, I informed an American friend I’d met at Columbia University in New York, sometime in 2003, that I’d moved to Louisiana.

He asked how I was adjusting to life there. I told him I was still learning to come to terms with many culture shocks. His response took me by surprise. He said, “I understand how you feel. I also suffer culture shocks each time I visit Louisiana.” He said he found the people in Louisiana and the South in general “weird,” and that they all “talk funny.”

This didn’t make much sense to me. The notion of America I had come here with was of a country that had no noticeable internal differences. I had a concept of America as a country where sub-national identities were so fluid and so flexible that a New Yorker could go to Texas, for instance, and not only be a citizen, but stand the chance of being elected governor of the state, and vice versa. In short, I had thought that in America, there were no “natives” or, as we say it in Nigeria, “indigenes”; only citizens.

Why would an American speak so disdainfully of another part of his country and even go so as far as to say that he experienced culture shock when he visited it? I soon found out that he was echoing the mutual contempt and distrust in which Northerners and Southerners in the United States hold each other.

Sometime in 2006, a friend in Louisiana was watching a sports channel but suddenly turned off his TV because, “It’s just a bunch of northern teams! I have no time watching fu****g Yankees.”

That outburst also caught me off guard. First, I used to associate the word “Yankee” with Americans in general. In fact, non-Americans usually interchange “American” with “Yankee” without the slightest hint that they are wrong. At first, it didn’t make any sense to me for an American to deride another American as a “fu****g Yankee.”

Well, I learned that day that “Yankee” actually refers only to an American Northerner. American Southerners don’t call themselves Yankees; in fact, some of them take serious exceptions to, sometimes outright umbrage at, being called Yankees. However, Northerners proudly wear that label. The word usually associated with the South is “Dixie.”

But what states constitute the South and North of the United States? Well, this is a tricky question. There is no universally accepted delineation of the South and the North. It is a shifty identity. However, it is usual to define the South to include 16 states: Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Oklahoma.

The 19 states usually considered Northern states are Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska.

In reality, however, such states as Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, Missouri, and Kansas don’t easily fit into the North/South divide. Citizens of these states sometimes identify themselves in mutually exclusive regional labels. I have, for instance, two friends from Maryland, and while one calls himself a Southerner, the other calls himself a Northerner. Similarly, people in southern Virginia call themselves Southerners, but it is not unusual for people in northern Virginia to regard themselves as Northerners.

The reason for this ambiguity is that, like in Nigeria, regional identity is not just a cold cartographic expression; it is also a socio-cultural, historical, and geo-political identity that sometimes mocks geography. Just like the rivers Niger and Benue appear to be the dividing lines between the North and the South in Nigeria, the American North and South are divided by what is called the Mason-Dixon Line. It was, and still is, the symbolic dividing line between the North and the South around Virginia and Pennsylvania before the American Civil War.

In many ways, it is like Rivers Niger and Benue in terms of symbolic significance. Such states as Benue and Taraba, for instance, would be regarded as eastern by a cartographer’s unaided imagination, just like Kwara, Kogi, and parts of Niger would be considered western. However, these states are both notionally and geo-politically in the North.

The equivalents of that in the United States are states like Maryland and Virginia, which are geographically in the North but are geo-politically in the South. In fact, Virginia used to be the political and military capital of the South during the American Civil War. It’s like Ilorin being the capital of the North.

In many significant respects, the American South reminds me of Northern Nigeria (with a few obvious exceptions) while the American North reminds me of the Nigerian South. In size, the American South, like Northern Nigeria, is a geographical behemoth, while the North is a comparatively small geographical space. (I’ve heard the joke several times here that a ranch in Texas is many times bigger than the state of Rhode Island).

Again, like Northern Nigeria, the American South is noticeably religious, culturally conservative, and emotionally attached to its socio-historical identity. The North, on the other hand, like the Nigerian South, is more urban, culturally liberal, and less attached to prefixed cultural values.

In the American South, the weather and the people tend to be warm—literally and figuratively. The North, on the other hand, is the opposite. Not only is the weather cold; the people are also cold, at least on the surface, although they can be warm on the inside if you get close to them.

Politically, the South is savvier than the North. It has produced more presidents than any region, including nine of the first 12 presidents of the United States. That’s similar to Nigeria’s North, which has produced more presidents and heads of state than the South.

However, after enmeshing itself in a four-year devastating Civil War, which pitted it against the North, the American South did not produce a president for nearly 100 years until 1976. The rest of the country was reluctant to trust a Southerner with the presidency of the country after the Civil War. This reminds me of the fate of the Southeast in Nigeria. And that is where the American South’s main difference with Northern Nigeria comes in.

“We held elections and have got results. Winners and losers have learnt and relearnt lessons. In the north where it is still largely a haram to educate the girl-child, a lady called Binani took Adamawa State by storm. In Lagos, fathers whose mis-trained children cannot speak and write Yoruba now know that they either reeducate them or they become aliens for life. The Lagos governorship election did not get strongmen panting for nothing. It has dramatically provided a redemptive moment for a culture under the distraining siege of ‘modernity.’ And many of today’s victors will soon be victims. They have children who are too learned to understand the language of their fathers. It is not only in Lagos; they are everywhere in Yoruba land flaunting sagging swags and blowing pidgin Yoruba. It is a tragedy in epidemic proportions. The Labour Party governorship candidate has got mortally singed because of his competence as a Yoruba. But his immolation won’t be a one-off political sacrifice. Judgement day will come very soon tomorrow for magisterial aliens in the shrine of Oduduwa.”

Under the cover of darkness, a dish was placed on a highway in Lagos at the weekend. It was food for the gods but it was a madman that we saw eating it on Saturday morning. The video trended online in competition with the shrieks of electoral madness which thundered through the Nigerian skies on that election day. Were there symbolic and spiritual relationships between that scene, that character and the elections we held at the weekend? Some people have sat on two hundred needles and got up feeling no pain. They are the special ones who would understand that breakfast at the intersection of life.

We held elections and have got results. Winners and losers have learnt and relearnt lessons. In the north where it is still largely a haram to educate the girl-child, a lady called Binani took Adamawa State by storm. In Lagos, fathers whose mis-trained children cannot speak and write Yoruba now know that they either reeducate them or they become aliens for life. The Lagos governorship election did not get strongmen panting for nothing. It has dramatically provided a redemptive moment for a culture under the distraining siege of ‘modernity.’ And many of today’s victors will soon be victims. They have children who are too learned to understand the language of their fathers. It is not only in Lagos; they are everywhere in Yoruba land flaunting sagging swags and blowing pidgin Yoruba. It is a tragedy in epidemic proportions. The Labour Party governorship candidate has got mortally singed because of his competence as a Yoruba. But his immolation won’t be a one-off political sacrifice. Judgement day will come very soon tomorrow for magisterial aliens in the shrine of Oduduwa.

I stumbled on former governor, former minister Rotimi Amaechi on the television on Saturday and froze. After almost eight years of being in government and in power, the former transportation minister opened his eyes and told the world that “There is a total failure of governance in the country, complete failure.” He said even much more. He also told us that Mahmood Yakubu was made INEC chairman not by the president but by someone in “Bola Tinubu’s camp.” Amaechi is a younger friend of Professor Wole Soyinka. The Man Died is the title of Soyinka’s prison notes. Has Amaechi ever used the opportunity of his closeness to the Nobel laureate to ask him the circumstances of his going to jail? If anyone has been too scared to chew Soyinka’s books, at least, they can manage to nib at the quote: “The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.”

Soyinka went to jail because he spoke what he believed was the truth when it should be said. He could wait till after the civil war in January 1970 and then say those things that took him to jail in 1967. If he did that, he would not be in jail for 27 months; he would be as safe in Yakubu Gowon’s Nigeria as Amaechi was in Buhari’s government. At what point did Rotimi Amaechi realize that Nigeria under the watch of his boss had failed completely? Why was he telling us on March 18, 2023 that Mahmood Yakubu is a dependant-beneficiary of one of the contestants in the February 25, 2023 presidential election? Amaechi, unlike Soyinka, his idol, kept silent in the face of wrong. The ‘death’ he was afraid of when hurricane APC repeatedly slammed into cities and homes eventually came for his own “camp” in Saturday’s governorship election in Rivers State and he shouted “people are being arrested and nobody has spoken. The Inspector General of Police is doing nothing, nobody is doing anything.” I laughed. Did arrest during elections not happen in 2019? Did Nigerians not “contest against INEC and the police” in 2019? Why should 2023 be different?

These past three weeks have badly divided us along religious, ethnic and sub-ethnic lines – especially in the South. The garment is rent front to back. It is so bad that even friends in the media are struggling to salvage their long-maintained friendship; party men in political parties have stopped partying together. For everyone, it is my ‘tribe’ first, others, maybe, later. It appears to be a burden the black man will carry forever. What we had on Saturday was not an election; it was a war of many theatres. ‘The Foreign Affairs’ is a publication of the United States-based Council on Foreign Relations. In a piece in that magazine in 1997, its then Managing Editor, Fareeq Zakaria, wrote on “the rise of illiberal democracies” with a particular focus on emerging trends in Sub-Saharan Africa. Zakaria quoted some scholars who concluded that democracy “is simply not viable in an environment of intense ethnic preferences.” There is also Andreas Schedler who observed that what was emerging in Africa was “electoral autocracy.” We also meet Richard Joseph (1998) who said Africa’s democratization had mostly proved illusory and the reigning political system a “facade of democracy.” That was about 25 years ago. I do not want to imagine what name those people would give what we have in Nigeria now. If anything has changed since those comments were made decades ago, it is that the floundering ship of democracy has sunk.

The elections are over. The youths who thought their voter cards were more than the pieces of plastic they are made of should be wiser now. They thought they could use the cards to change the course of history; they now know what their fathers have always known. If rescue efforts work like that, the Titanic would not have sunk. Probably if they had listened and taken a cue from Bola Tinubu’s hard-stone-on-hard-palm nut anecdote during the campaigns, there would have been a kernel for their effort. Probably the story would not have been as ghastly as it has turned out. Now, the struggle is muddled up. Local ethnic rivalries have most effectively poisoned the pond of patriotism. That is politics; it is dark and dirty. Author of ‘Politics is a Dirty Game’, Afra Schmitz, published a piece in ‘Violence in African Elections: Between Democracy and Big Man Politics’ (2018). His choice of title is instructive: ‘Once they all pick their guns you can have your way’…” It is a quote from a Ghanaian politician’s confession on the good old African trick of setting one ethnic group against another to create a pathway to election victory: “They will feel that they shouldn’t allow anybody from one tribe to be an overlord over all of them,” the man told Schmitz. It is exactly “like Ghana, like Nigeria.”

The war wasn’t just inter-ethnic, inter-religious. Enugu State is Christian with only one ethnic group but sub-ethnic passions ruled its governorship election last Saturday. Friends there told me that the Nsukka people, who constitute the largest voting bloc in the state, voted largely for the Labour Party candidate in the gubernatorial election because he is their son. The outgoing governor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, is their son too. The existing principle of rotation of power in that state did not matter at that point. Religion then came into the mix. Across the country, the church and the mosque ‘guided’ voters on whom to vote and how to vote. Some desperate people tried it in Oyo State but it didn’t work. They failed and Seyi Makinde, easily the best of the candidates, won. But politics of religion worked elsewhere in the country. I have Kaduna in mind; I have Benue; I have in mind the South-East in general. In some instances, specimen voting papers were taken to worship houses to teach congregants how to thumbprint. Labour Party in the South-East was quite ‘brilliant’ in its interpretation of its logo of ‘Papa, Mama and Pikin.’ They said the logo represents the spiritual triumvirate of Joseph, Mary and Jesus. The message, therefore, was ‘voting LP is voting for God.’

“If you won’t vote for us, don’t come out to vote.” It wasn’t only in Lagos we heard that stern order. Indeed, it is the greatest legal invention of this election season. In several states across the six zones of Nigeria, this new electoral rule was variously pronounced and the state nodded its approval with conspiratorial silence. The enforcers had a free reign. You don’t have the king on your side and cower in cowardice. Someone said even before Lagos’s MC Oluomo’s godfather is sworn in as the commander-in-chief, the chief enforcer in Lagos is already the law. All laws about hate speech and profiling, inciting and incitement melted days ago when MC stepped out to be counted among the Generals of the new army. The law and its enforcement stood before the man; they became as dumb as an ass. We will soon get used to things, stuffs and matters like that from May 29, 2023. But, there is a limit to which I will blame MC for saying and doing all he has been credited with. I was only disappointed by his attempt at eating his Mama-Chukwudi-if-you-don’t-want-to-vote-for-us-sit-at-home words. He was called to serve just like all those before him. Long before MC Oluomo, there was Adebayo Success (Adebayo omo Ogundare) who pioneered the leadership of the NURTW and its politics, and dutifully served the grand old NPN, the original owners of the northern structure that has given powers to the APC today. Adebayo Success’s ways are the ways of today. Political power in Lagos resides in motor parks and, to some extent, in markets. Those who cultivate the yams of power know this fact and are ever wise enough to put the right guards there. For MC, when history has a mission placed on your shoulders, it will be betrayal of the ancestors of your union to be lily-livered at the battlefield. The history of the transport union he leads has assigned to him a duty and he must perform that duty. And he has satisfactorily done just that this election season. So, let him be. You don’t kill a dog because it barks; you don’t kill a ram for using its horns (enìkan kìí toríi gbígbó kí wón p’ajá; won kìí toríi kíkàn p’àgbò). MC will do more for Nigeria now that his eagle has wider wings and his nest will soon be moved into the Presidential Villa.

We held the last leg of the 2023 elections across Nigeria at the weekend. Winners have been announced. Congratulations to them all. But while the process was on, videos of the crime and criminality that ruled the process in some states, north and south, littered the internet and shocked those who could still be shocked by Nigeria. “Elections are useless in Africa. We should devise a different way of choosing leaders,” a popular columnist and university teacher based in the United States commented to me on one of the bloody scenes. I did not reply him because I didn’t know what else we should try. Before democracy, we had kings who ruled and ruined their kingdoms and sold their people into slavery in exchange for mirrors and razor blades. Along with the kings later came colonialism with its own leprosy. We had parliamentary democracy which worked briefly but soon burnt out like a candle in the wind. We’ve had several doses of military rule. None worked for us. Today, with us, elections are thoroughly useless but what can we do?

What is there again to do? Leave the madman with the corpse of his mother? Ibrahim Bangura and Mimmi Söderberg Kovacs published a journal article in 2018 on ‘Local gangs and foot soldiers of violence’ in Sierra Leone. They carefully documented the stark truth they saw about the youths of that country: what drives their today and their vision of tomorrow. Bangura and Kovacs wrote that “…many young people are pessimistic about their prospects and see compliance with the wishes of the elites as their only way out.” They noted an emergent patronage system referred to locally as godfatherism which is seeing the “youths turn to the elites and those with perceived economic resources and ask ‘Bra u borbor dae? (Boss, is there anything for your boy?)’.” We have this in greater abundance in Nigeria. The elites of Sierra Leone and their menial youths probably schooled here. The authors are not done with their story of sorrow and surrender. They spoke with a young poor miner who explained how easy it was to lose all hope and submit to the owners of his country: “There is nothing to fight against in the system. In the end you fail; you can never beat them. You can only survive with the help of a patron. When they say jump, you ask how high. When they say throw stones at the other party, you do so. Don’t question them, just do it and when they trust you, they give you some money and even help you to get minor jobs. Our youths have learnt this survival strategy and they are effectively using it.” But, here in Nigeria, there should be an alternative to surrender. And there will be.

Last Thursday, 16th March, 2023, the news media was awash with a statement from the president-elect, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, titled “Nigeria: At the cusp of renewed hope”; I agree but also disagree with some aspects of the statement. I start by saying that the statement was timely; as our people will say, when you see an elder running, if he is not pursuing something, then, something is pursuing him. Again, as they say, there is no smoke without fire. The Tinubu statement appeals to Nigerians directly, I believe, over and above the head of some critical groups in society, the first of which is the government in power which, ironically, is APC, a party Tinubu helped to birth and on whose platform he contested and won the presidential election of Saturday, February 25th, 2023. We all witnessed how Tinubu fought tooth-and-nail to win his party’s nomination; how he fought a battle after another against principalities and powers within his own party and the cabals within the presidency throughout the campaign period; and how he literally had to corral the self-acclaimed leader of his party, President Muhammadu Buhari, dragging him along to a few of the campaign grounds to announce his support. If Tinubu hadn’t that way stooped to conquer, the outcome of the presidential election might have been different. If you put your ears to the ground you will hear rumblings despite the fact that the INEC has announced a winner who has promptly been given his certificate of return. Those who claim to know insist that Tinubu is not out of the woods yet. Whatever that means! And as Grandma taught me, it is too early to start dusting your clothes when you are yet to exit the woods or else, you may celebrate too early! Tinubu is still president-elect, not president and commander-in-chief yet. He still has a long way to go and each day that passes, I am sure, will look like a thousand years to him and his supporters. Although we pray, hope and wish that nothing sinister happens; technically, anything can still happen. A saying of our people is that whoever has seen thunder strike, will never stand in the gathering of those insulting Sango, the god of thunder. Beware, the ides of June 12, 1993! But may affliction never rise a second time!

Tinubu also has to speak directly to Nigerians over and above the head of those disparaging INEC and discrediting the presidential election locally and internationally, calling for its annulment and inciting Nigerians, especially our youths, to violence so as to instigate one negative action or the other against the outcome of the election and against Tinubu as a person. Among these are a former military and civilian head of state calling for an insurrection of youths that would occupy the streets in the manner of #ENDSARSNOW. Another is an elder statesman who has repeatedly threatened that the country would disintegrate if Tinubu wins the election and now that he has, if the outcome of the election is allowed to stand. Tinubu is right to appeal to our youths especially, in the same manner that I have appealed to my own children and the flock of God in my care, not to listen to those who quarter their own children and grandchildren in cosy comfort abroad but are urging the children of the less-privileged, products of years of hard labour, costly investment and great sacrifice that did not come cheap, to go and perish in the streets for nothing. If the Tinubu statement assuages the misgivings that sections of our youths harbour against him, then, it has achieved something important and is, therefore, worth making.

The Tinubu statement also appealed to those who contested the election against him, and their supporters who voted against him, to sheathe the sword; that he would be president and father to all; that all would have a part to play in his government and that the time to begin to think about the larger interest of the country is now. In that he extended the olive branch to his opponents and a hand of fellowship to all, Tinubu did well. He did not ask them to go jump into the Lagoon or hug a transformer! He recognised and accepted, all the same, their right to seek redress and recourse to litigation, if they so desire – but not a call for insurrection and a breakdown of law and order, an ill-wind that will not blow anyone of us any good in the real sense of the word and in the final analysis. In Yoruba, there is a bird called “eluulu”, which calls for rains to fall. Unfortunately, when the rains hearken and fall in torrents, “eluulu” gets soaked to its pants! It vexed me in my spirit that the last presidential election, which, in my view, was the most credible since June 12, 1993, was maliciously and mindlessly presented by the bad losers in the opposite direction. So sad! An election that should have showcased the giant steps and progress made over the years and the great work that INEC and the others involved have done, was turned on its head. Where the international community would have applauded us and the country’s image would have received a boost, these unthinking and selfish elements have left no stones unturned to try and return the country to the status of a pariah that was its lot under Sani Abacha.

Is it not said that it is how you esteem your attire that others will similarly join you in esteeming it? So, the Tinubu statement addressed the misguided and selfish elements; the pot calling the kettle black; the proverbial “a-ri-t’eni -moo-wi” but who covers up his own shortcomings with a drum. But thank goodness, the evidence of how elections were rigged in the South-east, for instance, are already surfacing on social media, where a candidate got 90-something percent of the votes cast in his catchment area; yet, it is this same person that is crying wolf all over the place. Lately, he appeared to have started recanting, making a nebulous distinction between “process” and “outcome” of the election! But he must not be let off the hook lightly; let the lawyers show to the whole world before the tribunal that he was a worse culprit than those he has railed against locally and internationally. The Tinubu statement also addressed the malevolent ones, if we may call them that; those that can become the agents and foot-soldiers for those intent on derailing our longest-running democratic experiment. Don’t set the country back! We travelled the same road again and again in the past and the outcome on each occasion was never palatable! Learn from history and refrain from repeating its mistakes. I give the Tinubu statement kudos in the above areas but, like I said, I have my reservations in certain areas.

Tinubu said “a fair and credible election has been held…” I agree! “I realize many good and well-meaning Nigerians voted for other candidates. They are naturally disappointed that their favoured candidate did not win. Other candidates have voiced their dissatisfaction, stating they will go to court to contest the election. This is inherent to the democratic process. We defend their right to seek legal recourse…” I agree! “”This is not the time for continued acrimony and partisan recrimination. These negative things can incite strong passions; but they are not the pathway to a better nation…” I agree! “Critics of Nigeria have been too quick to conclude that our political system is fragmented because of the impressive showing of new parties and their candidates. These critics are wrong” Yes, they are wrong but do you blame them? They keyed into the notes supplied by the bad losers at home. The Western world always gloats over bad news about Africa. Where there is none, they invent. And where they find Africans setting fire on their own roof, the better! “What must concern us is not the growth of parties but the regrowth of old prejudices and bigotries such as ethnicity, creed and place of origin”. I disagree here! What we call ethnicities here is called nationalities elsewhere. Where they are given their appropriate place in a true federalism (e.g. the United Kingdom), there is peace, progress and development but where they are muffled, repressed, oppressed and demonised as in Nigeria, there can be no peace and meaningful development. Restructuring or devolution of powers from the Centre to the regions is the panacea required, not demonization.

“There has been talk of a government of national unity. My aim is higher than that. I seek a government of national competence. In selecting my government, I shall not be weighed down by considerations extraneous to ability and performance. The day for political gamesmanship is long gone. I shall assemble competent men and women and young people from across Nigeria to build a safer, more prosperous and just Nigeria. There shall be young people. Women shall be prominent. Whether your faith leads you to pray in a church or mosque will not determine your place in government. Character and competence will. To secure our nation and to make it prosperous must be our top priorities. We cannot sacrifice these goals to political expediency. The whims of politics must take a backseat to the imperatives of governance. We have bridges and roads to build not just for commerce and travel but to connect people of different faiths, parties and different outlooks in harmonious dialogue and common purpose. We have families to feed not just to eliminate hunger but to nurture enlightenment, civic responsibility and compassion. We have jobs to create not merely to put people to work but to afford a better standard of living by which families and communities are improved and democracy deepened. We have water to replenish not just to quench physical thirst but to ignite a thirst for creative and better solutions to society’s challenges. We have a nation to protect such that we eliminate danger and even the fear of danger”

I agree but if Tinubu does all of these and 10 times more without restructuring this country, it will all amount to nothing.

“An important step toward restoring economic normalcy has been taken by the Supreme Court’s decision on the parity of old and new notes. This restores both the rule of law and economic decency. But this is not the end of the story. It is merely the beginning of a more comprehensive solution to our economic challenges” I agree but we must add that many have criticised Tinubu for keeping quiet over the Naira scarcity wahala since he won his election, whereas he cried out about it as a ploy to make him lose the election while he was campaigning. Good to mention it but I do not think this statement adequately empathises with our people. Yes, Tinubu is not yet in government but is this statement all he can offer to alleviate the suffering of the people? Somewhere in his statement, Tinubu said: “As your president-elect, I shall do my utmost in this regard for this is my sworn duty…” He must mean to say “as your president, I will…” because as president-elect, his hour has not yet come, to quote Jesus Christ when his mother pestered him to do a miracle at the marriage in Cana of Galilee. Or should we, right away, begin to expect miracles from the president-elect?

Concluding, the statement said: “Now is the time to stand fast and have faith in what this nation can be”. Well, as space constraints beckons, let me ask the president-elect to “stand firm” and not “stand fast” as he must be seen to correct many of the injustices of the past, especially of the Buhari era. When, for instance, was a Southerner the INEC or EFCC boss? When was the last time a South-westerner was the Chief of Army Staff or Comptroller-General of Customs or Minister of the FCT? I can go on and on! For the gaping wounds of this country to heal, more than physical infrastructure and a booming economy is needed. The injustice, especially of the Buhari era, must be addressed and redressed. That is the real task before Tinubu.

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.