Nigeria preparing to choose new president
2023.02.22 02:10
Nigeria preparing to choose new president
By Ray Johnson
Budrigannews.com – On Saturday, Nigerians will cast their ballots in what could be the most credible and close election since the end of military rule nearly 25 years ago. It will also be the first time a presidential candidate who does not come from one of the two main parties has a chance.
Bola Tinubu, a former governor of Lagos, is running against Atiku Abubakar, who is running for the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), and Peter Obi, a wild card candidate who left the PDP for the smaller Labour Party and currently leads at least five opinion polls.
Obi, 61, has used a well-executed social media campaign to win over young people who are bored with traditional politics and the old men who usually rule them, like Tinubu and Abubakar, who are both in their 70s.
However, analysts point out that he lacks the resources or extensive political base that the other two candidates do and question whether the polls that show him leading are accurate.
A slew of issues that have gotten worse under President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration will need to be resolved by whoever the people of Nigeria choose to take over. Buhari is only the second president in Nigerian history to voluntarily step down after serving two democratic terms.
These include the banditry and militant violence that is currently affecting the majority of the country, systemic corruption that discourages investment and enriches a well-connected elite, high inflation, and widespread cash shortages following the erroneous introduction of new bills late last year.
To address these issues, all three candidates have offered roughly comparable promises.
Additionally, voters will select new parliamentarians.
Abiodun Adeniyi, a professor of mass communication at Abuja’s Baze University, said, “This is one of the closest elections that has ever been held in the history of this country.”
On average, about a third of respondents to all polls that put Obi in front had no idea who they would vote for or were unwilling to do so. Additionally, they tended to target educated, internet-savvy individuals, and one of them required a smart phone to participate.
Senior Nigeria advisor for the International Crisis Group, Nnamdi Obasi, stated, “We must take these polls with a generous amount of salt.”
“These are online polls with literate people, but there are a large number of people who are not literate and are not online, especially in the north.” “The samples are small.”
Abubakar and Tinubu are popular in the north, whereas Obi’s known support base is in the south.
Even though the race appears to be close, Nigerian electoral law makes it unlikely that there will be a second round because the winner only needs a simple majority to win, as long as they receive 25% of the vote in at least two-thirds of the 36 states.
Many thousands of Nigeria’s 93.4 million registered voters face the possibility of being unable to vote as a result of the spreading insecurity, which includes Islamist violence in the northeast and banditry in the northwest and southeast.
However, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), which is becoming increasingly competent, has made progress in combating the fraud that marred previous elections. Electronic voting machines, card readers to verify that voters are registered in a central database, and the cancellation of results from polling centers when the number of votes cast exceeds the number of registered voters are all made possible by a law that was passed last year.
The procedure is now trusted by many Nigerians.
“We thank God the election is going to be fair this time,” Ngozi Nwosi, 51, who sells clothes at a stall in a Lagos market, said above the cheering and traditional drumming at a rally for Tinubu, her preferred candidate. We believe INEC. “Nigerians will go vote, and the person they voted for will win.”
