Frustrations boil over before Election Day
GWAGWALADA, NIGERIA — The seven sewing machines were quiet at Diamonds Empire on a recent morning. The blades of a standing fan were still. Adama Daniel sat behind the front desk of the dark, stuffy tailor shop and moped.
The blackout in the neighborhood not far from the capital had started nearly 28 hours earlier. Customers were waiting on suits, dresses and a tiger-print miniskirt. Daniel was contemplating firing up his generator, but that would cut into his profit margins.
In 2015 when he cast a ballot for president, Daniel, who is 29, thought he would be in a better place by now. He had bounded into a polling station to throw his support behind Muhammadu Buhari, who seemed bursting with ideas to grow the country’s lackluster economy. Daniel was elated when his candidate won. Finally, he thought, the country was on the right path.
With the election this weekend, any economic gains of the past four years are far from evident in Daniel’s daily life.
When he walks into the voting booth, Daniel is going to cast his ballot for Buhari’s main opponent, Atiku Abubakar.
“He had four years and couldn’t do anything,” said Daniel, speaking of the president. “Another four years won’t make a difference.”
Although Buhari did make notable moves toward improving the economy during his term, the impact has not registered widely. His crowning achievement: pulling the oil-dependent nation out of a grueling recession.
He also chipped away at inflation. He banned imports of rice and other food to help local farmers. He moved more than 5 million people onto the tax rolls. Earlier this week, officials announced the last quarter of 2018 was Nigeria’s strongest quarter of growth since the recession ended in 2017.
In a speech, he said Nigerians were seeing his economic efforts “bearing fruit.”
But outside the wealthy elite, all that means little to countless Nigerians. Daniel, for one, spends $200 a month to buy diesel fuel for his generator to keep his business going.
He’s anxious to finish his medical degree but administrators at his school, and all public universities, keep striking for months at a time to agitate for better resources. His brother has an engineering degree but can’t find a job that pays more than the tailors earn at Daniel’s shop.
Abubakar, who has put economic issues at the center of his campaign, “knows what Nigerians need,” Daniel said.
Nigeria is bracing for what could be a tight election this weekend. Threats of violence loom.
In the northeast of the country, a convoy heading to an election event and carrying Kashim Shettima, a state governor, was attacked by Boko Haram, an extremist Islamist group which operates in the region. At least three people were killed, officials said.
Many of the governor’s entourage fled into the bush after militants dressed as soldiers and riding in stolen military vehicles attacked, local news media reported.
The incident drew attention to another of Buhari’s 2015 pledges: to destroy Boko Haram. Far from being crushed, Boko Haram has recently been gaining strength.
In the south, militants in the oil-rich Delta threatened to disrupt the economy, presumably by blowing up pipelines, if Buhari were re-elected. At a rally for the president in Rivers state this week, at least four people were killed in a stampede. Election officials reported fires in several sites where ballot materials were being stored.
Tensions have been so high that the U.S. ambassador to Nigeria called on both campaigns to have fair elections.