OUT OF LUCK
Nigerian president concedes defeat as former general wins presidency.
• With anger swelling over corruption, inequality and a devastating Islamist insurgency in the nation’s north, Nigerians chose a former general who once ruled with an iron hand to be their next president, according to election results Tuesday.
The poll was the most competitive presidential race ever in one of the world’s largest democracies in. Now, if all goes smoothly, it will be a major shift for Nigeria — the first transfer of power between civilians of different parties in a country that has spent much of its post-colonial history roiled by military coups.
With all but one of the 36 states counted, Muhammadu Buhari held a lead of more than two million votes over President Goodluck Jonathan.
The remaining state is in the north, where Mr. Buhari enjoys broad support and the government has been widely condemned for allowing the hardline Boko Haram Islamists to sweep through villages and towns, killing thousands of civilians.
Since the end of military rule in 1999, Nigeria has been governed by a single, dominant party — Mr. Jonathan’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP).
Tuesday, Mr. Buhari’s campaign was confident it had won.
“We knew that we had the numbers last night, but dealing with the type of government we have, we have never really felt we are out of the woods ,” said Garba Shehu, spokesman for his All Progressives Congress. “Clearly we have won it. We are going to the party headquarters now and the presidential candidate will declare victory.”
Many analysts have long said a victory for Mr. Buhari would be more of a repudiation of the current president than a celebration of his past leadership.
Under Mr. Jonathan, Nigeria has been pummeled by Boko Haram, its economy has plunged with falling oil prices and corruption scandals have tarnished his image.
Mr. Buhari swept critical competitive states in the country’s southwest. A belated convert to democracy, he also piled up large vote totals, as expected, in his northern stronghold, crushing the incumbent in Kano, Nigeria’s second-largest city.
Analysts said the election could mean the beginning of a competitive two-party system in a country often seen as a bellwether for Africa.
“It is very significant in our democratic growth, in grounding democracy and consolidating it,” said Ebere Onwudiwe, a political scientist at the Ken Nnamani Centre for Leadership and Development. “We can’t have a one-party democracy. We’re setting a very great example for the rest of the smaller states in Africa.”
Warnings Monday from Britain and the United States suggested the government might try to exert some influence over the election result.
“So far, we have seen no evidence of systemic manipulation of the process,” said John Kerry, the U.S. secretary of state, and Philip Hammond, the British
foreign minis- ter. “But there are disturbing indications that the collation process — where the votes are finally counted — may be subject to deliberate political interference.”
A diplomat later explained there had been “credible reports … the army has been asked to go to collation centres around Nigeria to intimidate” and the request had come “from the ruling party and the presidency.”
A spokesman for Mr. Jonathan later denied any such interference. But military intervention had occurred at least once in the election, when the country’s top security officers, who serve at the president’s pleasure, forced the electoral commission to delay the vote for six weeks.
That extra time to campaign and spend gave the incumbent, who had far more financial resources than Gen. Buhari, a significant advantage, analysts said.
It also allowed a lastminute offensive against Boko Haram, with the deployment of South African mercenaries. The offensive reclaimed — for now, at least — much of the territory held by the Islamists in the northeast.
The reclamation occurred with military help from neighbouring countries. However, the Nigerian military has claimed the credit and a crucial question for the election’s immediate aftermath has been whether security forces would allow power to pass peacefully to Gen. Buhari.
Analysts said the challenger made a strong showing in states in the south and southwest.
“Those are fault-line states,” said Darren Kew, a Nigeria expert at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. “The PDP had a good machine on the ground there” that nonetheless failed to deliver.
Gen. Buhari’s supporters appear to have been more strongly motivated than those of a president whose reputation has suffered from repeated corruption scandals in his government and the mishandling of the Boko Haram insurgency.
In Kano, where Gen. Buhari led in the city and surrounding state by nearly 1.7 million votes, enthusiasm for the former general was “very, very high,” said Abubakar Jika Jiddere, a political scientist.
Polling places were packed on Saturday. On Monday, the normally teeming streets were emptied of vehicles and pedestrians as residents
awaited the results.