2023 General Election: Matters arising

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By default, electoral contest is meant to strengthen electoral processes such as ultimately deepening democratic ethos and culture to the extent that legitimacy by the governing is drawn from the governed. In the build-up to the 2023 general election, the desperation of some members of the political class was evinced that we are obviously a nation that have not learnt much from the previous elections. Once upon a time, a sitting president declared that the election for him and his political party was “do or die”. We grappled with garrison elections, where desperate tactics, wanton destruction of life and property became the order of the day.

So, before the Nigerian 2023 elections, in Nigeria, the tension and fears were indeed palpable. One continues to wonder why elections or as some so cynically say, selection, is often fraught with uncertainties and desperation, if it is about service to the people. However, we have finally seen the conclusion of the 2023 general elections with the October 27, 2023, judgement of the Nigerian Supreme Court which is the final arbiter of justice within the Nigerian legal system. Thus, expectedly, all participants in the election can now join hands with the declared winners to see to the development of the country through good governance. Here, I am not postulating that all politicians across the political class should divest into the ruling APC. Far from that, we need a robust opposition. As all democracies need the opposition to actually put them on their toes by challenging policies and actions of the party in government. In the days of yore, the legendary Chief Obafemi Awolowo played such a pivotal role with aplomb. His voice of courage, reason and insight provided alternative policy guidelines for both the First and Second Republics.

Notwithstanding the conclusion of the 2023 Nigerian presidential election processes there are a few lessons to take away for all involved and also for other election management bodies in sub-Saharan Africa most of which view Nigeria as a model in electoral practices. Matter of fact, there is a compelling need for a forensic audit of the process which ought to be subjected to sustained debate within the intervening period which should form the fulcrum for strengthening the electoral processes in the build-up for the 2027 general polls. As the saying goes an unexamined life is not worth living. What are the lessons, challenges and gains of the 2023 electoral management system?

It is curious that in the aftermath of the elections, all leading political parties ululated that they won and when INEC declared the APC, both dominant opposition parties disagreed. Firstly, it was intriguing that the Nigeria’s 2023 presidential election main opposition parties (the People’s Democratic Party and the Labour Party) both laid fervent claims of winning the elections as against the ruling party’s declared by the Elections Management Body in Nigeria named Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). In claiming that the elections were rigged against the two main opposition parties who jointly laid claims to have won the elections, neither of them the PDP nor the LP could provide alternate results as entered at the polling units which they claimed to have won. Instead, both were heavily relying on the courts to allocate votes to them. When asked by the courts to provide evidence of the votes allegedly tampered with by the election management body, INEC, neither of them could produce such results. It might interest the reader to note that in the Nigerian presidential electoral processes all the polling units are required to have agents of the political parties fielding contestants for the presidential elections and such agents are required to sign the result sheets from the polling units and keep a duplicate of same while a copy of the result is pasted publicly for viewing by the voters who are allowed to watch the process at a distance.

Happily both opposition parties mobilised their adherents and sustained their claims to the media spaces. My fears about a discernable media trial of particularly the judiciary notwithstanding, I followed the frenzy in the hope that, perhaps a magic wand was in the offing, alas, that was not to be. Hence, I am at a loss as to why the opposition parties who claimed to have won the presidential elections could not produce these results that are readily made available to all political party agents by the Nigerian elections management body INEC as a matter of law.

Secondly, the unpreparedness of the opposition parties and their candidates came to the fore towards the 2023 Nigerian presidential elections under consideration. For instance, Mr. Peter Obi the presidential candidate of the Labour Party abandoned the Peoples Democratic Party for the Labour Party in May 2022, a few months to the February 2023 presidential election. It is worthy of note that Mr. Obi was the Vice-Presidential candidate in the penultimate elections of 2019 as a running mate to the former Vice President, Mr. Atiku Abubakar, who incidentally was re-elected as the presidential flag bearer of the People’s Democratic Party in the 2023 presidential elections under a most acrimonious atmosphere. Hence both opposition candidates had a divided political base less than a year to the 2023 presidential elections with Mr. Obi taking the entire southeastern states where he hails from, a traditional home base for the PDP since 1999, providing bloc votes for the PDP’s presidential candidates in spite of any local politics going on in any of the five states which make up the southeastern geo-political region of Nigeria.

Consequently, the Peoples Democratic Party and its presidential candidate for the February 25, 2023 election Mr. Atiku Abubakar, already lost the entire southeastern geo-political region votes before the polls with the emergence of Mr. Peter Obi as the candidate of the Labour Party. This is also bearing in mind that the Nigerian political landscape is viciously divided along religious and ethnic lines, both of which play key roles in the support base of any candidate to emerge president in Nigeria. Hence both factors worked in the favour of Mr. Peter Obi, who is a Christian and an ethnic member of the southeastern geo-political region, while Mr. Atiku Abubakar, a Muslim from the northeastern geo-political zone stood no chance in the southeast. Therefore, the opposition of 2019 presidential elections were effectively divided and notably weaker in the 2023 presidential polls.

Thirdly, on the other hand, the ruling political party the All Progressives Congress (APC) fielded a presidential candidate who had both ethnic appeal in the southern region as well as religious appeal in the far northern geo-political regions. Moreover, the All Progressives Congress as a ruling party managed to keep its 2019 electoral support base intact with the power shift agreement to the southern geo-political regions after the eight-year rule of ex-President Muhammadu Buhari from the Northwestern region. Thus, as a political party, the APC kept a tight ship, holding on to its entire base while attracting other bigwigs from the southern regions with the power shift to the south agenda. In spite, of all of these permutations, the result of the 2023 general election revealed that if both leading opposition parties had morphed into a single party to confront the ruling party, perhaps the outcome might have been different.

In the final analysis, it can be deduced that the Nigerian electoral management body, INEC, overpromised towards the presidential election of 2023 and under-delivered. In fact, its delivery can be said to be very underwhelming, which ordinarily should have attracted commensurate sanctions. There are obvious gaps which the electoral management body should endeavour to fill to win the trust and legitimacy which some political actors have exploited to damage its reputation.

Dr Oyinloye is an Associate Professor in the Department of Conflict, Peace and Strategic Studies, Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti.

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