Point One

After the presidential and national assembly elections that took place penultimate weekend, Nigerians and the global audience must now look forward to state elections that are scheduled for this weekend. In doing that, lessons from the recent poll need to be applied to make the best of the impending governorship and state houses of assembly elections. The national elections have been won and lost in a manner that suggests Nigerian voter behaviour cannot be taken for granted by the political elite. For the presidency, incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) secured a mandate for another four-year term. He defeated his real challenger, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), by polling 15,191,847 votes to Atiku’s 11,262,978 votes. According to official verdict of the umpire, the president won outright in 19 states and secured the statutory 25 percent of votes cast in 15 others to make a haul of 34...

After the false start of the upper weekend, Nigeria finally made it to the poll last Saturday as citizens got to cast their ballots, hopefully in full accordance with their electoral wishes. Done now with the voting, we face the harder part: awaiting the declaration of outcomes by the umpire. Waiting on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to declare results for various constituencies involved in the poll is typically a nerve-wracking game of suspense. But appreciating the scope and design of the activity at play should help in understanding why the wait, and perhaps how to. The elections last Saturday were the national elections. The state elections, for governorships and state houses of assembly seats, are scheduled to hold a fortnight from now. Polling units nationwide where voters expectedly cast their ballots and from which vote counts are being pooled number 119, 973, with some of these further decentralised into 57, 023 voting points. There are 91 political ...