2019 presidential poll: A post mortem

Delayed for one week, the 2019 presidential poll was finally held and midwifed in the wee hours of Wednesday, February 27, 2019 by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Between Saturday, February 23, 2019 and Wednesday, February 29, 2019 when the process was in labour, as it were, Nigerians were kept on tenterhooks.

The snail speed that characterised the process after the voting which ostensibly arose from obvious challenges as well as massive paperwork in a 21st Century Nigeria gave room to all manner of speculations. The major opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), was vocal in its accusation against the INEC of taking time to doctor figures ostensibly in favour of the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), as results trickled in from different parts of the country.

This was in spite of the heavy criticism from the APC camp, alleging that the electoral umpire had sympathy for the PDP. It was also the first time in the history of this country that a ruling party would be suspicious of an electoral umpire during an election. However, at the end of the grueling exercise that stretched Nigerians to their elastic limits, the incumbent President and candidate of the APC was declared as the winner with total scores of 15,191,847 votes to defeat his fierce rival and candidate of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar, who polled 11,626, 978 votes.

Although the margin of about four million votes was a comfortable one for Buhari, the victory did not come as a stroll in the park. The main challenger gave a good account of himself.

Aside from the South-south and Southeast geo-political zones which are his strongholds, Atiku made significant inroads into the South-west where he captured two states of Oyo and Ondo, garnering 366,690 votes to APC’s 365,229 and 275,902 to APC’s 241,769 votes, respectively.

He also surpassed all expectations in Lagos state, the backyard of the national leader of the ruling party, Ahmed Bola Tinubu, polling 448,016 votes to APC’s 580,814 votes, falling short of just 132,798 votes. In the North Central where the politics of farmers/herders clashes was heightened, Atiku Abubakar also swept Benue and Plateau states into his kitty.

Buhari also poached the needed 25 per cent of the total votes cast in some states of the South-south and South-east, an improvement on his outing in 2015. But it was in the North-west and North-east that the race was eventually decided. While Atiku Abubakar won in four of the 19 northern states, namely Adamawa (his home state), Taraba, Benue and Plateau, the tsunami votes from the remaining 15 states swayed victory in favour of Buhari.

The pattern of voting in those states was a repeat of the outcome of the 2015 exercise. However, the opposition party has rejected the outcome of the exercise, declaring that the process was fraught with rigging in some parts of the country. Its candidate, Atiku Abubakar, has resisted the temptations from some party bigwigs to form a parallel government and chose to approach the court to test the validity of the outcome of the process. His democratic judgement has been hailed in several quarters.

It was almost a photo-finish going by the number of states won by each of the two parties: Buhari clinched 19 states; his close rival won in 17 states and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. Perhaps, it is this unexpected showing that is propelling the PDP and its candidate to challenge the validity of the overall result in court.

This rejection of the outcome notwithstanding, President Muhammadu Buhari, has been receiving congratulatory messages from world leaders, among them President Donald Trump of the United States.

The Ohaneze Ndigbo has also felicitated with him. The Governor of the home state of the vice presidential candidate of the PDP, Chief Willy Obiano, has also sent his goodwill message. Local and international observers as well as head of monitoring groups from the Commonwealth and Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have also declared the exercise as acceptable despite some obvious lapses and violent conducts in some parts of the country which were regarded as not too serious as to rubbish its validity.

Overall, Blueprint Weekend congratulates Nigerians for the polls that were relatively peaceful. Regardless of the grouses from some aggrieved quarters, in the end, it is Nigeria that won the elections, thus keeping our international image on an even keel. As the nation looks forward to the governorship and state assembly polls next Saturday, it is expected that the polls, which are more critical to the grassroots, will be keenly contested. The electoral umpire must up the ante in ensuring free, fair and transparent elections drawing from its experiences in the conduct of similar exercises under the watch of the incumbent chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu.

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