Nigeria's April 16 state government elections and April 21 presidential elections have been carried out as scheduled. People’s Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Umaru Yar’Adua, won the presidential election in a landslide victory, having garnered 24,638,063 votes.  All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP) candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, came in second place with 6,605,209, and controversial Action Congress (AC) candidate, Atiku Abubakar, rounded out the top three vote getters with 2,637,848 votes.   Such a lopsided victory in favor of the ruling party, the PDP, has predictably caused an enormous backlash from losing parties, who decry the elections as predetermined and a farce.  More striking, however, is the fact that civil society groups and several international observer groups have also concurred that the elections were poorly run and illegitimate.

Losing parties have levied grave accusations against the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the group that ran the national elections, and the PDP, alleging pervasive corruption in the forms of election-rigging, deliberate ignorance, lack of voter equality, among others.  The AC chief, Tom Ihkimi, has declared that the AC will go to the courts to challenge the results.  Also, ANPP chief Ume Ezeoke has alleged that the INEC is a “tool for the ruling party.”   Meanwhile, losing ANPP presidential candidate Buhari has stated that he will not challenge the election results by going to the court.  Buhari, who lost the 2003 presidential election to Olusegun Obasanjo, has already gone down this road, so to speak, and believes that going to the courts is a “waste of time,” saying of the elections, perhaps ominously, “We have tried it and failed and it is up to Nigerians to decide what they want.  You can only take power through the ballot box; through the gun or through a revolution.”   Buhari has encouraged mass protest, and ANPP youths, numbering 500, have rallied in his support, calling the election results a “delay in the return of the mandate to Muhammadu Buhari.”

Widespread protests by independent groups have also flourished.  The Coalition of Civil Society Organizations, which consists of 35 civil society groups, has submitted a 10-day ultimatum to the Nigerian federal government, calling for the complete cancellation of the April 16 and 21 election results.  The leader of the coalition, Dr. Joe Okei-Odumakin, is extremely critical of the way the elections were carried out, calling the whole process a “rape” and a “challenge to our humanity…If we do not pile enough pressure on the present 'ruiners' of Nigeria to reverse this odious process, we are doomed as a people.”    The Coalition of Democracy and Rule of Law (CODARL) claims that police have arrested 82 of its members after rallying against what they believe to be a “rigged” election.  

Perhaps the most damning support for the argument against the validity of the election results comes from international observer groups, who roundly describe the elections as poorly run and in need of vast improvements, noting low turnout, ballot shortage, violence, and vote-rigging.  According to chief European Union observer, Max van den Berg, “These elections have not lived up to the hopes and expectations of the Nigerian people and the process cannot be considered to have been credible.”   According to the Transition Monitoring Group, which claims to have employed 50,000 Nigerians observers on the ground during elections, “We call on the international community not to recognize these discredited elections and not to confer legitimacy on any government that emerges there from.”  The National Democratic Institute (NDI) laments that “The serious flaws witnessed during this electoral process threaten to further erode citizen confidence in the country's democratic institutions,” but also offers hope, “At the same time, there are positive trends in the country's democratization process that give rise to hope.”   All in all, the general opinions by international observer groups have been roundly negative, agreeing that the leadership has failed the Nigerian people and that the elections fell below international standards.  The INEC and the leadership of Nigeria, especially President Olusegun Obasanjo, should be ashamed of themselves for their part in running such tainted elections, if they are to be called elections.  Still, there is hope for the future of Nigeria’s young democracy.

Meanwhile, in response to the wide-ranging criticism of the elections which will put him in power on at the end of May, president-elect Umaru Yar’Adua has praised the INEC for a job done “excellently well,” but he has not turned a blind eye to the rampant criticisms of his election.  He recognizes room for improvement, but reasons, “There is no where in the world where you have a perfect system.”  As for the “idealists” who clamor for new elections, he describes them as “those given to building castles without first laying a solid foundation.  In the real world, such castles, even if painted in the flowery hues and described with colorful words hardly exist."   Clearly, Yar’Adua does not empathize with his detractors and feels that the election process was just and fair.  Moreover, while many oppose him in his own country and abroad, the United States, Japan, Canada, and others, have already sent their congratulations to him.  Yar’Adua has the enormous, if not impossible, task of validating his presidency ahead of him.

The IIJD predicted that the Nigerian elections would not be successful given the enormously controversial months leading up to them.  The most overt example of the INEC and Obasanjo’s tampering was their attempt to prevent Vice President Atiku Abubakar from the running, first by an illegal order to disqualify him and then, second, by an effort to prevent him from appealing the decision by repeatedly pushing back his court date.  The IIJD believes that, should the situation in Nigerian further devolve into veritable chaos, President Obasanjo should be held chiefly responsible.  It seems clear that, despite publicly preaching free elections, he handpicked Umaru Yar’Adua to succeed him all along.

It does not grant hope or optimism to Africa’s many other struggling nations that a nation as resource-blessed as Nigeria should still be so politically inept, its leaders preaching democracy while practicing corruption.  To quote Professor of Law at Columbia University Francis Ssekandi, who contributed to a previous article, “Nigeria is too important in Africa to play such games.”