Nigeria : Task Ahead For New President

Five days after millions of Nigerians went to the polls to elect the country’s new President, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has laid to rest the minds of many anxious Nigerians by declaring the candidate of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu winner of the keenly contested 2023 presidential election. The declaration that was made in the early hours of Wednesday, March 1, 2023, met many Nigerians asleep. Mr Tinubu, considered the godfather of Nigerian politics, ran his campaign on the slogan “It’s My Turn.” He received 37% of the votes, with nearly 8.8 million votes, while main opposition candidate Atiku Abubakar won 29% with almost 7 million votes. Third-place finisher Peter Obi took 25% with about 6.1 million and 1.4 million votes gave Rabiu Kwankwoso 6.2%. The rest of the candidates scored 2.7%. Most analysts say the victory of the former Governor of Lagos state is in part thanks to a split in the ranks of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party.
Though just like in previous elections, the result are likely to be challenged in court by some of the contestants especially, the PDP of Atiku Abubakar and LP of Peter Obi, the 70-year-old President elect Bola Tinubu has already extended a hand of fellowship to his fellow contestants. “I take this opportunity to appeal to my fellow contestants to let us team up together,” Tinubu said. “It is the only nation we have. It is one country and we must build together.”  The tightly contested election has brought to light two key factors; it has re-structured Nigeria’s electoral geography and secondly produced results that are significantly different from those of past polls. For the first time in the history of the country, a president is to take office after winning less than 50% of the vote. Even though Nigeria’s outgoing President, Muhammadu Buhari, has congratulated his successor saying that, “None of the issues registered represents a challenge to the freeness and fairness of the elections,” the competing political parties now have three weeks to appeal results.
However, if one were to go by the results where four candidates won over a million votes, and also do a simple addition of all percentage votes in favour of opposition parties-63%, one is tempted to say a daunting task awaits Mr Bola Tinubu with the first challenge being to legitimize his election by putting in place an inclusive government and focus firmly on rebuilding national cohesion. This implies he will need to win the support of the larger majority, particularly the youth, the Christian groups that were opposed to his Muslim-Muslim ticket and Igbos in the South East who again feel they have been robbed of the presidency and of course the neo-Biafra separatist agitations in the south-east. Economically, Nigeria’s 33.3% unemployment (42.5 per cent for the youth) and 22.3 per...