“A do or die affair” is a common description of Nigerian elections, which underlines the competitiveness and acrimony that characterize the quadrennial political ritual. The recently concluded 2015 general elections were fiercer than most, with expectations that they would end in a contentious stalemate at best, and engulf the country in violent political crisis at worst. Many people stockpiled food, the affluent and many expatriate workers took strategically timed holidays abroad, and Nigerians in regions of the country distant from their birthplaces sent their families home in expectation of a prolonged post-election crisis. Yet, in the end, the actual conduct and outcome of the elections defied expectations. Not only did Nigeria conduct its most credible and transparent elections since independence with minimal violence but, for the first time in the country’s history, an opposition party – the All Progressives Congress (APC) – defeated an entrenched ruling party (the Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP). The peaceful and credible conduct of these polls has set Nigeria on a trajectory towards consolidating its democracy, transitioning from a largely unstable and expedient experiment in 1999 to the realm of political maturity. This briefing discusses how this was achieved despite the challenging context....READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE ▶▶
The federation of Nigeria operates a presidential system in which elections to executive and legislative positions take place every four years. These elections also take place across thirty-six federal states for the state governors and legislators, and in the Federal Capital Territory. Federal and state executives are constitutionally permitted a maximum of two terms each. The competitiveness inherent in presidential systems worldwide is heightened in Nigeria’s case by the immense power, resources, influence and perks constitutionally granted to the President, who directly commands both the army and the police, and appoints both the cabinet and the boards of over 700 parastatals. Historically, electoral contests in Nigeria have been a two-horse race between an entrenched ruling party1 and a major opposition,2 with smaller parties often in loose coalitions with either of the two. This tendency has made the political system vulnerable to polarization, often overlapping with the country’s traditional fault lines of north–south, Christian–Muslim, and majority–minority ethnicities, despite constitutional provisions designed to ensure that a winning party must manage to transcend these cleavages to some degree.3
Within this political and legal context, typically elections have favoured the ruling party and its incumbent candidate, especially the federal executive running for a second term. The massive payoffs of electoral victory generate excessive desperation on both sides, encouraging electoral manipulation and fraud that undermine the credibility of the entire process. The political polarization that accompanies these contests often generates instability and violence before, during, and after the electoral process, and has even provided an opening for military intervention. Over 800 people died in violence in the aftermath of the 2011 elections, while the military usurped the civilian administration shortly after the elections in 1964, 1983, and 1993.
A PDP victory would have represented the continuity of these historical trends, but amidst a fractured polity that – many observers speculated – might not survive the continuation of the status quo. An APC victory entailed the promise of a radical deviation from established patterns. Buhari’s win overturned general expectations, as most initial analyses by academics, think tanks, and risk assessment specialists like the Eurasia Group had predicted an overwhelming PDP victory.4 The question is why and how did the 2015 elections buck the incumbency trend? The answer is found in four factors that had built up steadily over time: (1) the fragmentation of the ruling PDP as the main platform for elite coordination; (2) the government’s dismal record in economic management, addressing human development challenges, tackling corruption and securing lives and property; (3) divergent election campaign tactics employed by both parties; and (4) better preparation by the electoral commission, in particular in its use of biometric voter cards. However, a decisive role was also played by more immediate factors, such as the APC’s primary elections, which presented the party as a viable and more credible alternative, and the postponement of the elections in February. The confluence of these factors undermined the historical trend of the certainty of an incumbent victory, and resulted in the historic defeat of Jonathan and the PDP. We first outline these factors, which explain the exceptionalism of the 2015 elections, and then analyse how they played out in the conduct and outcome of presidential elections.
Party politics: new elite alliances amidst the ruling party’s fragmentation
The several incarnations of Nigeria’s multi-party democracy have featured a dominant ruling party and several opposition parties fluidly competing and cooperating with one another. The PDP has been the ruling party since 1999 at the presidential and governorship levels, a testament to its broad-based support across Nigeria’s regional, religious and ethnic fault lines, as well as its deep national networks. It is the platform on which Nigeria democratized and the organizational basis for its competing and cooperating elites. Within these sixteen years of democratic rule, the party has outlived its rivals, some of which have merged with other parties, collapsed completely, or faded into the obscurity of regional politics.5
However, the PDP’s ability to accommodate interests and settle internal disputes was severely degraded after 2010, when the party failed to resolve a dispute over the collapse of its power-sharing principle – sparked when Goodluck Jonathan decided to run for office in 2011 after the untimely death of President Umaru Musa Yar’adua, a northerner, while in office.6 The system of allowing power to rotate between different regions, or “zoning”, was designed to overcome perennial fear of domination between the north and the south, among the major ethnic groups, and between Muslims and Christians, which had led to violent coups and bloody civil war in the mid-1960s. Jonathan’s insistence on running for a second term in the 2015 elections, despite an alleged promise to party chieftains that he would serve for only one term, further strained the party’s cohesion and generated significant internal dissent. At the same time, President Jonathan’s lacklustre personality, his limited experience, and the perceived provincial orientation of his administration, which relied on an inner core from the Niger Delta, alienated him from powerful party members.
It is within this context that the All Progressives Congress (APC) emerged. In 2013, Muhammadu Buhari of the Congress for Progressive Change, Bola Ahmed Tinubu as leader of the Action Congress of Nigeria, the leadership of the All Nigeria People’s Party, the governors in these parties, and other opposition interests merged their parties to become the APC. The APC coalition remained cohesive, unlike previous attempts to unite the opposition, drawing strength and membership from a fractured PDP. Crucially, former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar (1999–2003) and seven governors, including Rotimi Amaechi of the oil-rich Rivers State, walked out of a PDP Convention in August 2013.7 They formed a splinter faction and shortly after joined the APC. As the PDP increasingly lost the ability to manage its internal squabbles, the APC became stronger, coalescing around a core of south-western veterans of the Action Congress of Nigeria party, northern oppositionists close to Buhari, and ex-PDP dissidents especially from the Middle Belt and Niger Delta regions.
Differences were evident in the presidential primaries of the two parties, which were held in December 2014. The APC selected its presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari in a credible, transparent, and competitive party primary between four candidates broadcast on television across the country, cementing a south-west and northern alliance it had failed to pull off in coalition talks on the eve of the 2011 polls. Simultaneously, President Goodluck Jonathan was unilaterally endorsed in a tightly controlled PDP convention flanked by outgoing state governors. The divergence in party behaviour in the primaries consolidated the APC’s popularity among its support base in the north and the Yoruba south-west, while also expanding new frontiers of support in the traditional strongholds of President Goodluck Jonathan.
The deep-rooted Nigerian political establishment, with its strong tendency to conservatism, shifted towards considering the APC as a possible party of government when former President Obasanjo, who had already publicly undermined Jonathan in a public letter-writing fallout in December 2013, publicly tore up his PDP party card in front of journalists at his Ota home just weeks before the polls.8 Many of his closest associates had long since quietly defected to the APC.
The equally cautious forces of the global economy also began to shift from their usual ‘continuity equals stability’ approach to Nigeria, most visibly on 7 January, when Jim O’Neill, former chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, said in Abuja that ‘the markets would be happy’ if Jonathan lost to a credible alternative. This unprecedented statement was an indication not only of the APC’s perceived global credibility but a self-fulfilling prophecy of Jonathan’s prospects, which seemed to be increasingly shared by most of Nigeria’s major international partners, seemingly exasperated by the administration’s failure to deal with either insurgency or basic issues of governance.
Governance failures
The PDP’s failures in governance since the transition to electoral rule in 1999, especially within the six years of Jonathan’s leadership, provided sufficient ammunition to the opposition, but also turned the tide of public opinion against the government. During the campaign, the Nigerian economy increasingly became a source of concern. Nigeria, like a number of sub-Saharan countries, experienced consistently high growth rates averaging 7 percent from the mid-2000s until 2014. However, rising inequalities have offset the poverty-reducing benefits from growth in recent years.9 Six out of every ten Nigerians live under the poverty line, up from five out of ten in 2004. Nigeria is on course to miss many of its Millenium Development Goals, with 10.5 million school children not enrolled in school.10 There is an average of 1.8 million new entrants into the labour market each year.11
These disappointing human development indicators appeared within the context of very high crude oil prices, the benefits of which have accrued to a fortunate few. Subsidies to cushion international oil prices for domestic consumers disproportionately benefited a powerful cartel of politically connected importers that maps loosely onto the PDP’s wider networks and structures. As parliamentary investigative reports have shown, fuel subsidies rose from N346.7 billion in 2008 to N1.7 trillion in 2011, an almost 400 percent increase.12 Industrial-scale crude oil theft in the Niger Delta, opaque crude oil swap deals, and questionable partnership agreements with third party entities are just some of the avenues of massive leakage in the oil sector, which escalated to stratospheric levels under Goodluck Jonathan. The oil sector, which generates over 90 percent of export earnings and up to 70 percent of fiscal revenues, has been the locus of fraud, corruption, and mismanagement involving high-profile policy makers in the oil ministry, the state oil corporation, and politically connected business interests.
The inability and unwillingness of Jonathan’s administration to address corruption in the oil sector, especially that perpetrated by his close allies, served to sway public opinion against his administration. Notable cases that incensed Nigerians and the international community included the presidential pardon granted to a former state governor who skipped bail from the United Kingdom on money-laundering charges, and the sacking of former Central Bank governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi for raising concerns over $20 billion crude oil earnings unremitted by the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and the state oil corporation.13
The corrosive impact of corruption extended far beyond the oil sector, affecting the government’s ability to manage its security challenges, especially the Boko Haram insurgency in the north-east of the country. Despite an annual defence budget of up to $6 billion since 2012, the insurgents rapidly became more sophisticated, brazen, and deadlier in the scale of their attacks and ambitions. In 2014 alone, over 13,000 people died, hundreds of women and children were abducted, and the insurgents occupied nearly 30 towns and villages.
Although a renewed offensive by the security forces since February 2015 significantly rolled back Boko Haram’s gains, Jonathan’s administration had already come to be regarded as incapable and negligent in protecting lives and property from an insurgency that threatened to engulf the West African sub-region. In northern Nigeria, much of the public subscribed to contorted conspiracy theories that ascribed the insurgency to government itself, while international allies appeared increasingly disillusioned with the administration’s efforts. The insincere, belated, and defensive handling of the abduction of 279 schoolgirls from Chibok in Borno in April 2014 not only put Nigeria’s problems on global front pages but also convinced many citizens that the Nigerian state was no longer interested in or able to fulfil the one role in which it had traditionally excelled: a powerful, if violent, paternalist leviathan providing security of last resort.
The parties’ campaign tactics
Election candidates used a number of different means to try and reach voters ahead of the 2015 polls. In addition to traditional methods such as campaign rallies and town-hall meetings, campaign messaging was spread by broadcast and print media through mini-documentaries on TV and newspaper advertorials, while Facebook, Twitter, and other social media were employed to engage with younger voters.14 The focus on social media reflects candidates’ recognition of Nigeria’s rapidly changing demography – more than 70 percent of the population are regular users of the Internet under the age of 30. The focus of the two parties and their candidates on the content of the messaging, effective targeting, and efficient strategies to reach the electorate led to an upsurge in the use of political and public relations consultants, both local and foreign. The image management began in earnest last August, when polling company NOI Polls, founded by Finance Minister Ngozi Okojo-Iweala, trumpeted its finding that President Jonathan had a 61 percent popularity rating.
In 2014, Goodluck Jonathan employed American political public relations firm Levick to help improve his image after his government’s disastrous handling of the abduction of over 200 girls by Boko Haram, although it is unclear whether Levick managed the PDP’s campaign messaging. As the campaign progressed, the PDP’s messaging quality deteriorated, becoming increasingly divisive in ethnic and religious terms, and focusing on personality attacks against key opposition members rather than policy messages. There were numerous attacks on Buhari’s educational qualifications, health, chances of dying in office, and relatives (including his deceased daughter), all of which the AIT news channel repeatedly broadcast a highly controversial documentary. Some PDP campaigning messages were unusual – advertisements depicting Jonathan alongside Jesus, for example – and some were disastrous, like the ill-advised ‘Bring Back Our President’ parody of the ‘Bring Back Our Girls’ hashtag, from which the presidency speedily dissociated itself.
The divisive rhetoric also permeated physical rallies.15 It reached fever pitch on 2 March when First Lady Patience Jonathan told a Calabar crowd ‘anybody that come and tell you change, stone that person’ [sic]. The APC responded by reporting the issue to the International Criminal Court, citing comparisons with Côte d’Ivoire’s former First Lady Simone Gbagbo who was at the time being prosecuted for similar incitements. Such outbursts prompted Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission to make public statements about hate speech, following which the tone of campaigning cooled somewhat. Another of the Commission’s concerns was the violence of campaigns in some parts of the country. By the time of postponement, around 40 people had been killed in clashes between rival supporters, almost half of them in Lagos where factions vied for places in the upcoming reorganization of local power structures that control the street economy.
The APC ran a comparatively more responsible campaign that was not entirely focused on policy messages, but capitalized on Jonathan’s personal weaknesses as well as those of the his party. The APC similarly accessed external expertise, engaging the services of the US Democratic Party strategist David Axelrod. However, it also relied on a broad spectrum of young people who ran social media campaigns, websites, blogs, TV and radio debates, telephone and face-to-face campaigns, and who manned an APC situation room to tally and monitor elections results on a largely volunteer basis.
Campaign funding was also crucial and will have lasting impacts. The enormous benefit to be attained from holding public office makes Nigerian elections a high-stakes contest. Despite expanding opportunities in Nigeria’s vibrant private sector, public office remains a preferred path towards individual accumulation and upward social mobility. Nigerian legislators are the second-highest-paid in the world.16 Partly as a result, running for office across all tiers of government is extremely costly. Money is needed to buy nomination forms, buy off media and rivals, and campaign within different constituencies. It costs about $2 million to run for a national legislative position, and between $5 and $10 million for a governorship position. Candidates expect that these expenses will be recouped once in power. Therefore, elections have been intensely competitive and are vulnerable to manipulation by desperate politicians under pressure to recover funds ‘invested’ in running for office, with little regard for representing the interests and concerns of the electorate.17
Even by Nigerian standards, the amounts of money spent on this election were huge – up to N2 trillion ($10 billion) was spent by the PDP on the presidential elections by some estimates.18 Funds from some state financial institutions were directed to political ends and even direct disbursements ordered. A few weeks before the elections, one of the major agencies was directed to disburse up to N2 billion ($9.9 million) to PDP state governors from funds initially budgeted for enterprise development.19
Yet it became apparent after the elections that incumbency can produce perverse incentives. This gravy train flowing from a patron whose chances of re-election were perceived to be dwindling seems to have led many of the beneficiaries to pocket much of the cash assigned for electioneering, or try to take it out of the country, exacerbating a forex shortage driven by the oil-price downturn and leading to a further depreciation of the naira against the US dollar. As Figure 1 shows, the value of the dollar began to appreciate rapidly against the naira in November 2014, shortly before the party primaries, and then sharply in February, after the postponement of the elections. As early as September 2014, the Central Bank said it suspected early political campaigning was spurring inflation – brought on by politicians building war chests in dollars – and announced new measures aimed at tackling money laundering,20 while media reported increased political and campaign spending.
Currency exchange rate comparison, May 2014 to May 2015 Source: Oanda Currency Converter
Political capital was diverted in a similar way, as Jonathan’s campaign troubles became increasingly obvious. In order to save their own prospects, many northern PDP aspirants began to campaign openly for ‘sama tsintsiya, kasa lema’ (vote Buhari for president, but for me locally).21 Ineffective Vice-President Namadi Sambo (Kaduna State) was virtually invisible throughout. This exacerbated the presidential inner circle’s distrust of northerners within the PDP, further hampering the campaign’s coherence. The campaign reportedly also had a rude shock when a bussed-in crowd at a PDP rally in Adamawa (a state hard-hit by the Boko Haram insurgency) openly supported Buhari in front of the president. Following that incident, the PDP inner circle had to radically reassess the party’s popularity.
Election management
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and its chairperson, Professor Attahiru Jega, played a central role in delivering a credible election. The INEC has suffered in the past from poor preparation, lack of independence from the executive, and the logistical challenge of organizing elections across Nigeria’s vast territory comprised of 36 states, 774 local governments, and over 170 million citizens.22 To improve the integrity of the electoral process in 2015, the INEC cleaned up the voter register and introduced a biometric identification system to reduce fraud. As a result, the number of voters registered declined from 73.5 million in 2011 to 67.4 million by January 2015.23 Even on the eve of elections, concerns about voting logistics remained, mostly centred on the extremely late distribution of permanent voter cards, which left appreciable numbers disenfranchised.
Electronic card readers were employed at the polling units for voter verification, which was extremely significant because only the voter cards of actual registered voters could be used, removing the possibility of wholesale padding of voter figures unless coordinated from a much higher level. This is turn meant that election riggers were left with two alternatives: reduce the turnout of opposition supporters through the use of violence, or attempt to rewrite history by influencing INEC officials during the collation process. The former was the case in some areas, especially some Niger Delta states, but was minimized elsewhere by high public turnout and strong desire to exercise the vote, as well as good security management and a wide community and elite consensus in favour of change (especially in northern states). The latter, though not eliminated, was made harder by Jega’s appointment of his own collation officers, mostly academic colleagues, as a second filter over the heads of the government-appointed resident electoral commissioners, who had previously been notoriously vulnerable to compromise. Tampering with the collation process was also made difficult by the opposition’s well-organized parallel vote counts, which scrupulously recorded results through the chain in preparation for the need to prove rigging publicly or in the courts.
Despite the improvements in election management, preparations were not entirely on track, and so a number of last-minute factors played an important role in determining the conduct and the outcome of the elections. The first and most significant was the postponement of the presidential and gubernatorial elections originally slated for 14 and 28 February. The reasons officially given by INEC’s chairperson was that the army and security forces had indicated they would not guarantee security because of an impending new six-week offensive against Boko Haram.24 The real reason for their refusal probably had much more to do with the ruling party’s sudden realization of its impending defeat. For instance, the PDP Chairman, Adamu Muazu, and a militia leader allied to the PDP, Frederick Faseun, subsequently stated that the PDP would have lost if the elections had been held on the initial dates.25
This attempt to buy time to reorganize turned the general tide of public opinion, international support and sympathy away from Jonathan and the PDP, with many undecided voters pledging support to the APC.26 The delay inadvertently helped the opposition in other ways. For instance, it allowed INEC to improve on its preparations by distributing more biometric voter cards, from about 60 percent coverage before the postponement to over 80 percent by the elections proper.
Neither did it help the PDP that the top hierarchy of the party consistently antagonized INEC by attempting to impugn the integrity of the widely respected chairperson, Professor Jega, floating the idea of his early retirement, and trying to prevent the use of biometric voter identification. These moves further eroded the ruling party’s public support. Finally, the renewed offensive against Boko Haram led to the liberation of towns such as Gwoza and Bama, which might have been expected to restore a measure of confidence in the government, but had the effect of allowing more people, including Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), to vote in a region that is an opposition stronghold.
Presidential and National Assembly election results
The presidential and National Assembly elections were conducted on 28 March. The accreditation of voters was largely peaceful despite a few challenges with electronic card readers, which largely had to do with lack of proper training in their usage. Notably, the card reader in President Jonathan’s polling unit failed to pick up his fingerprint, so that officials resorted to manual accreditation. Although the public failures were embarrassing and portended a loss of confidence in the process, in total, card readers failed outright in only 300 of 150,000 polling stations (0.2 percent) according to INEC.27 The actual voting process was generally smoother and more peaceful than in previous elections, although it extended until the next day after late starts (poor transport logistics) and large turnouts. There were isolated cases of outright ballot box snatching around the country, one reported incident of underage voting in Taraba (photographed and widely circulated on Twitter), Boko Haram attacks on a few polling units in Gombe in the north-east, and isolated incidents of violence elsewhere.
The main theatre of violence was in the Niger Delta region and parts of the south-east, both strongholds of Jonathan that historically have been flashpoints of violence. In these regions, the accreditation and the voting process in states started late, voters were intimidated or scared away from polling units by ruling party and security agents, elections materials were insufficient, and attacks on voters, party agents, and observers occurred. Both the Rivers and Imo state governors complained about voting irregularities in various polling units in their states. There were reports of deaths in Rivers and Akwa Ibom, while protests by women and young people were broadcast live on television.
The official collation by INEC was televised over three days, amidst immense uncertainty as to how either the ruling party or the opposition would react to the elections outcome. While voting was concluded on the second day, results from individual polling units streamed in gradually and were independently collated by the media, citizen journalists and election observers, showing APC to be in the lead early in both presidential and legislative elections. In the 2011 elections, the opposition also had an early lead, but it was followed by a lull before government wins with implausibly large margins came in from PDP strongholds in the early hours of the morning. Despite predictions that this would occur again, it did not. However, an unprecedented short joint statement by the UK and the US in the middle of the count made a strong allusion to the existence of such plans, implicitly referring to ‘disturbing indications’ that the collation process might be subjected to interference, and hinting at the likely international consequences.28
Tensions peaked on the third day of collation, which was almost disrupted by a stand-up protest on live television by an ally of President Jonathan, Godsday Orubebe, a former minister of the Niger Delta, who accused the INEC chairperson of ‘bias’ and ‘tribalism’, and sought to stop the collation. According to a subsequent investigative report, the public meltdown was part of a wider plot by PDP supporters from the Delta in a last-ditch attempt to create a disturbance in the hall and have thugs snatch Jega from the stage as the APC’s comfortable lead became obvious.29 However, the refusal of Jega’s bodyguards to stand down and his mature handling of the volatile situation averted its escalation. Importantly, Jonathan’s concession call to Buhari, several hours after the Orubebe incident and before the final tally of votes, averted the prospect of prolonged political uncertainty and outbreaks of violence. Instead, the concession was followed by wild street celebrations in many parts of the country, and notably few incidents of retribution against rival supporters.
At the end of the process, Buhari’s APC polled 53.96 percent of total votes cast, while Jonathan’s PDP polled 44.96 percent. The regional distribution is significant (see Figure 2). Buhari’s APC received block votes from all of the north-west, with an average of 73 percent of votes cast, even in Kaduna with its significant Christian and PDP-voting population. In Kano, the second most populous state in the country, Buhari’s 1.9 million votes represented 87.6 percent of those cast, while Jonathan polled just 9.9 percent. In the north-east, Buhari polled a majority in all but one state, Taraba, where Jonathan had a narrow victory (51.6 percent of votes cast). Buhari won cumulatively in the middle-belt, with a large swing to APC across the region, but not by a landslide, except in Kogi, Kwara, and Niger, with 60.3 percent, 65.5 percent, and 77.9 percent respectively. The PDP won by a narrow margin in Nasarawa and Plateau (governed by Jonathan loyalist Jonah Jang), with 52.4 percent and 54.9 percent respectively. The APC’s win by 53.2 percent of votes cast in Benue, a predominantly Christian and historically PDP-leaning state, was a surprising upset to those unaware of the dissatisfaction with the PDP that had been growing there since before 2011. Buhari’s APC won by a clear majority in the south-west, and in all states in the region except Ekiti – whose governor Ayo Fayose is a vocal ally of Jonathan – although by a much slimmer margin than even in the closer Middle Belt contests.30
Distribution of votes, both parties Source: Nairaland.com
The surprises were Lagos, where APC polled 53 percent, a narrow margin over the PDP’s 42.3 percent despite it being the heartland of the ACN segment of the party; and Ondo, where Buhari won by close to 50,000 votes despite the state having a PDP governor. In the south-south, Jonathan’s home region, his party won by a landslide, securing up to 97 percent of the votes in five states, except Edo, where he polled 55.4 percent. These immense, if questionable, margins conform to historical patterns of electoral manipulation in the region.31 Landslide wins in populous states such as Rivers (home state of the First Lady), Delta, and Akwa Ibom significantly increased Jonathan’s cumulative votes. As in his home region, Jonathan’s PDP won by a landslide in the south-east, polling up to 94 percent in Enugu. One surprise was Imo, where despite the APC state governor Rochas Okorocha, Buhari only managed to scrape 18.2 percent. The APC suffered in the south-east from a historical taint originating in the country’s 1967–70 civil war, in which Buhari was an officer in the conquering army and the south-west APC’s political ancestor, the Action Group, was one of the two pillars of the federal government. With south-easterners resident in the north affected by Islamist attacks, it was also the region in which the Christian messaging of campaigning was likely to be most resonant, although notable clerics also preached against Jonathan and the PDP from the pulpit.32
Conclusion
The new government will benefit from the rosy glow of international legitimacy and a honeymoon period of public goodwill from Nigerians, but it will come into government with empty coffers and low global oil prices. Another serious challenge for the APC is whether it manages and sustains the cohesion of its broad and unwieldy coalition. It will have to deal with the issues of rotation and ‘zoning’ in appointments, which were responsible for splitting the PDP, and must also satisfy a number of factions within the coalition: the former ACN, former CPC, and PDP defectors. It will also have to reconcile its publicly popular commitment to fighting corruption with some of its more “traditional” politicians’ expectations of office.
The APC’s loud signals to deter the flow of ‘any government in power’ post-facto defectors, combined with the tendency of winner-takes-all politics to generate rival elites, mean that there will be a ready supply of aspirant oppositionists. This would also be desirable. As some more idealistic lights in the APC have pointed out, Nigeria needs a good opposition for government to perform well. Indeed, if an APC government in an age of austerity is unable to meet the very high public expectations of it, a reorganized PDP could stand a good chance in 2019. In the shorter term, demoralized and disorganized PDP legislators may not offer much resistance to the APC’s ambitious reform agenda. That resistance is more likely to come from the civil service and the party’s own local political structures.
Nigeria could transition into a two-party presidential system along the lines of the US, on whose constitution much of Nigeria’s is modelled. However, the distrust sown inside the PDP during the campaign may consign it to a different fate. Looking for whom to blame, the Jonathan clique seem to have settled on northerners whose allegiance they consider suspect, pointing fingers at figures like the former party chair and campaign manager Adamu Mu’azu who resigned under pressure following the polls. An early casualty was the Inspector General of Police Suleiman Abba, sacked via Twitter shortly after doing an exemplary job of policing the elections in a non-partisan manner. If matters continue in this vein, the PDP’s damaged brand and internal witch hunting could consign it to a narrow regional focus, entrenched mainly in the south-east and the Niger Delta.
Another outcome of the elections is an increase in INEC’s credibility and the Nigerian public’s confidence in electoral democracy, thanks largely to the voter cards and Jega’s integrity. A less happy light has been shed on Nigeria’s security services. Despite their integrity and independence during the polling, much damage had been done earlier by the army’s perceived complicity in delaying elections, as well as its involvement in rigging of previous elections in Ekiti, revealed by the APC during the campaign, and the state security service’s blatant partisanship such as a raid on the APC’s membership and data centre in November 2014. Service chiefs are unlikely to remain in their jobs for long under a Buhari administration, and some measure of restructuring may also be expected. The appalling elections in Rivers and other Niger Delta states will also have lasting consequences for both stability and political inclusion. Niger Delta militancy was the unspoken threat that underpinned the Jonathan presidency, and the APC already faces a tricky task in negotiating a new relationship with such groups; the inflamed election situation in those states will complicate the task.
Nigeria’s 2015 elections did not represent a social or political revolution. The PDP lost the elections largely because the party failed to manage a stable elite consensus. Many new APC faces come from backgrounds similar to the old, while the president himself is a former military ruler and the primarily top-down forms of political mobilization that came to the fore in the election point to the persistence of an elite-consensus approach, if one more technocratic and communicative than before.
Yet it was a watershed event in that change was won for the first time by and through popular participation. It has given the Nigerian public a renewed sense of its own empowerment and sovereignty, the right to decide, and new expectations of political accountability. If Buhari fails to perform, runs a popular refrain, ‘we will vote him out too’.
This transition of government through the ballot box, rather than the actual government produced, may be the most profound legacy of the 2015 elections. It also means we may need to reappraise our understandings of Nigeria’s political sociology, in the light of the shattering of the myth of political incumbency, and look for signs of improved accountability among the political class. Even though previous patterns of accumulation and mobilization may seek to re-establish themselves in Nigerian politics, it will be amid a changing demographic and a public with more sense of its own empowerment and discretion.
