NO NEW DAWN?

Muhammadu Buhari has been declared president after a vote plagued by delays, logistical issues and violence. Given his previous performance, it’s unclear he’ll be up to the challenge of the next four years

Bonaventure Nnagboro has made the 496km journey from Lagos to his voting district in Nigeria’s South East political zone twice in the past few weeks. First, for the national elections scheduled for February 16 — a vote that was postponed just hours before polling stations were due to open because of “logistics challenges”. Then, for the rescheduled February 23 presidential and parliamentary poll — the state-level election will follow this weekend — an event that was itself beset by logistical issues.

Independent National Electoral Commission (Inec) staff arrived late at the polling station, and the smart-card readers used to verify voter identity weren’t operational until the late afternoon.

So while the original turnout at the polling station had been high, he said, this was not reflected in the number of voters who actually stayed to cast their ballots.

What it means:

Nnagboro’s experience of the election — billed as a tight race between incumbent president Muhammadu Buhari of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and former vice-president Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) — would seem to be indicative of the vote more generally.

In addition to the postponement and logistical problems, there were issues around vote collation.

That’s not counting the violence: SBM Intelligence, an independent political and socioeconomic research outfit, counted no fewer than 52 deaths on polling day, more than 300 people killed in the run-up to the election, and more than 100 afterwards. In all, police spokesperson Frank Mbah said 120 people were arrested across the country for various electoral offences.

Nigerians announced their displeasure at the delays on Twitter: #Noinec received thousands of tweets within minutes, with users posting pictures and complaining about the nonarrival of Inec officials. Though the commission said polling would begin at 8am, with the deadline for the arrival of the It’s unclear how Buhari expects to realise his campaign promises to kick-start the economy and neutralise security threats

last voter set for 2pm, Twitter users suggested that many Inec officials had failed to arrive by 8.30am.

Twitter user Senator Saheed, who posted a photo of his polling unit at the Federal Housing Authority gate in Lugbe district in Abuja, wrote: “Over 1,000 voters in the queue and yet no Inec officials have arrived as of 8.15am.”

Tweeting from Benue state, Udeh Adole said: “It is 8.04am at my polling unit, Ella Market. No security. Voters hanging around.”

In Lagos, Oladapo Olowo wrote: “No Inec staff at Cobham junction polling unit in Ajao estate off Airport Road, Lagos.”

Several demonstrations took place on the day. In Kaduna state in the northwest, protesters hit the streets at Stadium

Roundabout as soldiers mounted roadblocks in the area in an attempt, it seemed, to stop residents from southern Kaduna travelling to their polling stations in the northern part of the state. The soldiers said they had been ordered not to allow the movement of people. Kaduna is divided between the mostly Christian south and mostly Muslim north. It was assumed that most Christians would vote for the opposition PDP.

In Imo state, protests by ad hoc Inec staff started at about 11am. The 300 protesting staff alleged they’d been replaced overnight, and without being informed, by staff loyal to the ruling APC.

The collation process, too, seemed flawed, with claims of thuggery and intimidation of electoral officers at many centres, and some electoral observers and journalists denied access to collation centres.

In the Ughelli collation centre in Delta state, journalists were prevented from entering the premises to monitor the process. Domestic observers from groups such as the Transition Monitoring Group were also banned from monitoring the exercise in various places. Two international observer groups, the Pan African Women Projects (PAWP) and Intercontinental Leadership Initiative, were allegedly intimidated after questioning the credibility of the election in Akwa Ibom state. PAWP spokesperson Mphoentle Keitseng said she and her colleagues were accosted by thugs in Essien Udim council, where APC candidate and Buhari ally Godswill Akpabio was seeking re-election to the senate. (He lost, and has rejected the result.)

In all, Inec discounted about 1-million votes across 1,175 polling units in 18 states. At the time of writing, the electoral commission had yet to provide reasons for this.

During the collation process, the PDP called for counting to be stopped until accreditation data from the smart-card reader at polling units was made available to all parties. Though the demand was in line with Inec’s stated commitment to a transparent, free and fair election, it was ignored; on February 27, Inec declared Buhari the winner.

According to Inec data, Buhari won 15,191,847 votes against Abubakar’s

11,262,978 — a margin of 3,928,869 votes. Buhari won in 19 states, and Abubakar in 17 as well as the capital, Abuja.

Celebrations over Buhari’s victory seemed to be more muted than four years ago, when he edged out incumbent Goodluck Jonathan in a close-run contest.

However, opposition parties were vocal in their discontent. They claimed the 15% margin of victory was the result of heavy vote rigging, and said they would explore every option, including the legal process, to make their case.

The PDP, which refused to sign the result sheet, said Buhari’s victory was an anomaly. PDP vice-presidential candidate Peter Obi accused Inec of disenfranchising up to 8-

Of 10-million registered voters in the South East zone, only about 20% cast their votes