On May 29, 76-year-old Muhammadu Buhari will be inaugurated for a second, four-year term as president of Nigeria. Despite a modest first-term record, economic stagnation and ongoing insecurity throughout wide swathes of the country, and continuing uncertainty over his health, Buhari defeated his principal rival Atiku Abubaker of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and a field of 71 others to win a substantial 55.6 per cent of the vote, a margin of nearly 4 million votes over Abubaker. Although Buhari’s victory is being disputed in court by Abubaker and others, it seems unlikely that any irregularities will be deemed severe enough for the judiciary to overturn the outcome of the vote.
Buhari’s health notwithstanding – the president just returned from a ‘private visit’ to the United Kingdom, where he previously received lengthy medical treatment in 2017 – some commentators argued before the February vote that the president’s re-election was in doubt. Many thought the election would be more competitive than it turned out to be. The low participation of Nigerians – particularly in the southern states – argues otherwise. Although Nigeria’s voter rolls hit a record 84 million registrants (albeit more than 11 million voter cards went uncollected), at least by the measure of voter participation, Nigeria can no longer claim to be Africa’s largest democracy.
Buhari, a retired general and former military head of state in the 1980s, was an immensely popular figure, with the credibility to confront the country’s security challenges, notably the Boko Haram insurgency that had by then proliferated throughout northern Nigeria. Jonathan’s defeat, in part, was a result of his perceived failure to marshal the security agencies to effectively respond to this threat.
Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has yet to publish the number of votes cast in the gubernatorial and state legislative elections, but turnout for these polls may well have been lower than for the presidential elections. Though Ethiopia, with around 100 million people, is still dwarfed by Nigeria’s population, and some Ethiopian vote counts might have been artificially inflated by the regime of the day, leaving lingering questions about irregularities in those polls, the point of comparison remains: Nigeria’s vote demonstrated widespread political apathy in the continent’s most populous country. While there was much relief that the elections passed without significant outbreaks of violence, twenty years after the restoration of multiparty democracy, it seems that Nigerians have contracted a democratic malaise.
Why is this? What challenges lie ahead in Buhari’s second term? And what can be done?
A frustrating first term
Buhari came to power at a moment of optimism in Nigeria. In 2015, defeated incumbent Goodluck Jonathan handed over power without conditions, despite some in his camp urging him not to concede. A smooth transition was far from inevitable. Sixteen years of PDP rule had been broken by a new opposition alliance, the All Progressives Congress (APC), which promised to sweep corruption out of Nigeria, and bring real change to the country.
Buhari, a retired general and former military head of state in the 1980s, was an immensely popular figure, with the credibility to confront the country’s security challenges, notably the Boko Haram insurgency that had by then proliferated throughout northern Nigeria. Jonathan’s defeat, in part, was a result of his perceived failure to marshal the security agencies to effectively respond to this threat. Buhari offered a mantra of change anchored on the philosophy of security.
However, the Buhari government, while upbeat about its ability to improve the security environment, underestimated the reality of the security challenges, and concentrated on tactics, rather than strategy. Recent years have seen a series of poorly executed attempts to close the barn door after the proverbial horse – or perhaps, to be more transportationally accurate, the pilfered Land Cruiser of the militant – has long since bolted. Ultimately, Boko Haram might now be degraded, but it is certainly not eradicated. And even as government forces achieved some successes, military losses were heavy, and army morale was always in doubt.
Even though Boko Haram has receded in its lethality, other security problems have mounted over Buhari’s term in office, notably the so-called farmer versus pastoralist conflicts, which occur throughout the northern and middle belt states of Nigeria. While these clashes are largely described in similar terms – as a reckoning between two fundamentally different forms of primary economic production – there are, in reality, different modalities of conflict within the rubric, which, when conflated, are oversimplified. Some disputes are genuinely environmentally-motivated, as pastoralists and farmers effectively compete for the same scarce resources. Some are motivated by retribution for past inter-communal wrongs, real or perceived.
But many others are not “clashes” as this word might first connote: there is rarely a battle between two well-defined armed forces. Instead, organised militarised groups have acted to displace others from their lands, who are usually unarmed. Perceptions abound that this is either politically orchestrated and/or politically instrumentalised, although evidence is hard to come by.
Irrespective of their motivations, some argue that such violence has continued because of ineffective responses by the state and a reluctance to deal with their root causes. Overall, Buhari’s administration is widely felt to have lost the ability to contain, mitigate, or prevent such violence. Coupled with organised banditry, a rapid rise in the sophistication of kidnapping gangs (who, despite the headlines, more frequently target Nigerians than foreigners for ransom) and continued insecurity in the oil-producing areas of the Niger Delta, insecurity for many Nigerian citizens is a daily, and sadly-accepted, fact of life.
In some respects, expectations of Buhari’s assumption of power were little different from those that have characterised each of Nigeria’s political transitions since the return of democratic rule in 1999. A repeated promise to review the nature of the country’s federalism – which in such a vast and varied country raises implications far beyond the brand of constitutionalism of the state – returns to questions about what the state is for, and the distribution, and redistribution, of economic resources and political power.
To be fair to Buhari, many of the challenges Nigeria faces are not new, nor of his making. In less than five years, Nigeria’s currency has devalued from about 200 naira to the U.S. dollar to 360, with the predictable inflationary effect, even as the personal economy of many Nigerians stagnated. In addition, Nigeria is still overly reliant on earnings from petroleum, despite the vast majority of the labour force not being employed by the oil sector.
After Buhari’s first term, the situation remains much the same: the central determinants of the nature and character of governance and inter-group relations are still unchanged, with those for whom the federation does not work – and the millions of Nigerians for whom the state does next to nothing – still waiting for more. Beyond the comical scandals and the embarrassments that have so far characterised Buhari’s time in office, these more profound frustrations and limitations remain.
Beyond personalities: Structural economic challenges
To be fair to Buhari, many of the challenges Nigeria faces are not new, nor of his making. In less than five years, Nigeria’s currency has devalued from about 200 naira to the U.S. dollar to 360, with the predictable inflationary effect, even as the personal economy of many Nigerians stagnated. In addition, Nigeria is still overly reliant on earnings from petroleum, despite the vast majority of the labour force not being employed by the oil sector. For those at the bottom of the income pyramid, the opportunity of social mobility is all too distant. While technically Nigeria exited economic recession in 2017, even as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) observed that it was “the recent rise in oil prices [that] is supporting the recovery.” Regardless of the IMF’s prognostication, or the recent reassurances of the Central Bank in response to the prediction of some at the Nigeria Governors’ Forum that another recession was looming, popular sentiment remains pessimistic.
Can Nigeria provide economic opportunity for its people beyond the sticky black gold? A surging population both demands and requires that attention. While insecurity – whether caused by Boko Haram, inter-communal conflicts, banditry, farmer-pastoralist conflicts, violence in the Delta, the secessionist movement of the Independent People of Biafra (IPOB) in the south east, or simmering grievances caused by the prolonged, detention of Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, the leader of the Shia Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) – is a real and contemporary issue, Nigeria, more so than any other African country, is brimming with young people who want jobs, education, and a chance to better their lives. More than a million young Nigerians join the labour force every year. Conventional politics and politicians have yet to offer an answer for many of these Nigerians, who may well be condemned to a near-permanent class of unemployment or underemployment.
Before and after the election
Survey data from Afrobarometer, which polled Nigerians before the 2019 elections, showed that only 35 per cent of Nigerians trust the INEC “somewhat” or “a lot.” It’s hard to know whether INEC’s 2019 performance has dramatically affected these numbers, but the general aura of competence and professionalism that the current iteration of INEC hoped to enjoy was first damaged by INEC’s poor communication with the public leading up to the vote. Moreover, the middle of the night postponement – almost literally, as well as figurately, at the last minute – of the presidential and national assembly elections, originally due to be held on 16 February, conjured a thick cloud of doubt over INEC, from which the current commissioners’ reputations may not recover.
Though INEC was able to conduct the elections on the rescheduled dates a week later, its claims of competence and preparedness were inevitably undermined, and its image severely tainted. The goodwill extended to INEC, conditional and partial though it may have been, the legacy it received from its credible administration of the 2015 polls, largely dissipated. Had the election results been closer, and had the commission’s role been more scrutinised, the situation could have been very bad indeed. If there was a silver lining to the cloud of delay, it was that in the aftermath of the postponement of the presidential election, INEC offered a concrete communication strategy, and a much-needed daily public briefing on its activities and plans. But such a basic public relations effort could easily have been instituted at a much earlier stage.
And, as feared, security actors, and particularly in the southern state of Rivers, the military militarised the electoral process. Despite INEC’s assurances that the police would be the lead agency on electoral security, this was not the case. In states where election-related violence occurred, including Kano, Rivers and Lagos, a lack of neutrality and professionalism on the part of some security personnel that were deployed to provide security during the elections was a contributing factor. The army has since established a committee to probe allegations of misconduct; Nigerians await the findings of these investigations and the extent to which the army high command will discipline those found responsible.
One of the biggest challenges facing the Buhari government is exclusion – he must ensure social cohesion and must manage diversity by prioritising a religious and ethno-regional balance in public appointments, accompanied by a fair and equitable distribution of the country’s resources
Yet, as with Buhari, Nigeria’s electoral woes transcend any single election commissioner or army officer. The prophecy of institutional poor performance is all too often self-fulfilling. The existing widespread Nigerian scepticism of government and state institutions is only exacerbated by every failure, while the pattern of ethno-regional and religious alliances that underpin the national electoral process seems to provide an enduring and recurring basis for political instability and state capture.
The challenges ahead are not insurmountable
In the past, the opportunities for addressing some of Nigeria’s core challenges have been mostly wasted. The protracted debate about the management of the country’s national diversity remains protracted and unresolved. One of the biggest challenges facing the Buhari government is exclusion – he must ensure social cohesion and must manage diversity by prioritising a religious and ethno-regional balance in public appointments, accompanied by a fair and equitable distribution of the country’s resources. It is vital that the number of votes Buhari garnered from a particular region or perceived to gain from particular groups is not the basis for the administration of the nation.
Buhari has an opportunity in his next four years to lead the country as a nationalist, as the leader of a Nigeria for all Nigerians. Such a national appeal is necessary in order to assuage credible fears about the marginalisation of any region or any ethnic, religious or linguistic group; if he fails to allay these fears, the fault lines of identity will only deepen.
Further, a fundamental overhaul of the country’s security architecture is desperately needed. While there is no single reform that will address the myriad forms of insecurity, the government’s approach to the country’s security challenge needs a fresh and a deep reform of the military command’s hierarchy to allow for fresh ideas and strategies to emerge.
Finally, beyond assenting to a bill to introduce a minimum wage, the government needs to devise creative approaches to genuinely address national economic development and diversification. Nigeria’s boat cannot only be floated by the world’s oil price. The patience of many young Nigerians is not infinite: at some point, in the not too distant future, the logic of the state may no longer be sustainable.
