WEIGHING THE OPTIONS
Nigeria’s presidential poll looks to be a close-run race, with little to choose between the two major political parties and their candidates for the top job
Nigeria may be on the brink of change, with millions of voters going to the polls this weekend to choose candidates for a government that will guide the country for the next four years. The focus of electoral efforts has been on the big prize — the presidential contest. Though there are about 70 candidates in the lineup, it is essentially a two-horse race between the incumbent, Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC), and Atiku Abubakar of the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP), which the APC pushed from office in the last poll four years ago.
Both parties have attracted substantial support, but neither appears to offer the country the new start it needs to reboot its stagnant economy and address the myriad entrenched challenges it faces.
There is no compelling difference between the two in terms of policy and legacy. Before the 2015 election, many politicians crossed the floor from the PDP to the APC to take up political and government posts, while those who lost out crossed the floor back again. It led one analyst to cynically say Nigeria has one main party with two factions.
Buhari and Abubakar are both in their 70s and neither is new to the political scene. Buhari stood for president three times before he won in 2015; Abubakar was vicepresident under Olusegun Obasanjo from 1999 to 2008.
Both men are also Fulani — Hausa-speaking Muslims from the north of Nigeria — so there is little separating them in terms of identity politics. This is important to note because, until recently, electoral support has split along geographic and religious faultlines. The trend shifted in the last elections, when Buhari received strong support in the Christian-dominated south.
He won by a landslide, despite misgivings about his stint as a military ruler in the 1980s. His campaign promises — fighting corruption, subduing the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram in the northeast, and rejuvenating the economy — resonated with Nigerians who were tired of underdevelopment, looting by public officials, insecurity and growing poverty.
His APC party, a coalition cobbled together to challenge the PDP’S long period of uninterrupted rule, also won in most of Nigeria’s 36 states.
But Buhari’s star has faded since then. Though he still enjoys the support of many who believe his anticorruption campaign has made a difference, his detractors maintain that his hands-off governance style has allowed corruption to flourish. No high-profile arrests have been made, and the corrupt heads of state agencies have been replaced rather than prosecuted.