All sides vow peaceful Nigerian election, but concerns linger

Nigeria’s main opposition candidate was absent on Tuesday as presidential candidates pledged to hold a peaceful vote amid growing fears of violence.

The country’s ailing president, Muhammadu Buhari, was in attendance with 69 other hopefuls.

Yesterday, Atiku Abubakar’s People’s Democratic Party blamed his non-attendance on a “communication lapse” between the National Peace Committee, which organised the event, and its national secretariat.

The party also affirmed Mr Abubakar’s commitment to avoiding violence during the campaign and election.

But the incident increased fears of electoral turmoil in Africa’s most populous nation, where vote rigging, intimidation and violence were once the norm.

The committee was formed after political violence in the 2011 elections, the bloodiest in Nigeria’s history, when about 800 people were killed and 65,000 displaced. Mr Buhari stood and lost in that election. But the threat of conflict remains.

“Commitments on paper alone will not prevent electoral fraud or violence if either Mr Buhari or Mr Abubakar, or their supporters, come to believe that is their best option for claiming power,” Ed Hobey-Hamsher, senior Africa analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, told The National.

An informal agreement means the Nigerian presidency alternates between a northern Muslim and a southern Christian after two terms, which is a recipe for violence. The risk in this election is lower than it could be, because the two main candidates are northern Muslims competing for their chance at the rotating seat and the divide is largely political rather than ethnic, said Mark Amaza, an independent political analyst in Nigeria.

But the build-up to the election has been feverish, with Mr Buhari’s record blighted by illness, economic stagnation and a brutal Boko Haram insurgency that has killed 20,000 people and displaced millions since 2009. Morale is extremely low in Nigeria’s battered military, which has made scant progress against the insurgents.

The military was sent to 33 of the country’s 36 states for the fight against Boko Haram.

Last week, Mr Abubakar’s running mate, Peter Obi, claimed authorities had frozen his bank accounts.

Days before, Mr Buhari, who has spent large periods of his presidency in London for medical treatment, assured voters he had not died and been replaced by an impostor.

In October, Nigerian security forces killed 45 Muslim protesters in the capital, Abuja, Amnesty International said.

In the same month, a dispute between Muslim and Christian youths at a market in northern Kaduna state, reportedly over a wheelbarrow, left 55 dead.

Driven by climate change, violence between nomadic Fulani Muslim herders and farmers, many of whom are Christian, has killed thousands in central and eastern Nigeria.

Apart from communal tensions, 87 million Nigerians live in extreme poverty.

The Nigerian economy, plagued by corruption, recently emerged from a six-quarter recession.

With perceptions of fairness crucial to avoiding unrest, biometric voter cards, introduced in 2015, will again be used to reduce the risk of fraud. But violence cannot be ruled out.

“Delays to the election, violence during campaigning or voting, the ability or otherwise of the electoral commission to deliver a credible vote and transparent results, and inconclusive or narrow results will all move the dial on the risk of electoral violence,” Mr Hobey-Hamsher said.

The National Peace Committee was formed after about 800 people died as the result of election violence in 2011