Frills of 2019 presidential election

Chima Ameachi

 The 2019 presidential and National Assembly elections may have come and gone, the outcome of the polls remains a subject of debate and discussions among Nigerians.

What is not however lost on most Nigerians, especially with regards to the presidential election is the fact that there will be only one winner in the end. And the winner has since emerged.

For the first time in Nigeria’s political history, 73 individuals vied for the country’s presidency. For the first time also, Nigerians had to vote not with their thumbs but with any finger; to according to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), prevent “ink spilling into the box meant for another party”.

And at the end of the election, on Wednesday, February 27, Chairman of INEC, Professor Yakubu Mahmood, declared incumbent President and candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Muhammadu Buhari, winner of the elections, having fulfilled the legal requirement of winning not only the highest number of votes of 15,191,847, but also at least 25 percent of the votes in two-thirds of Nigeria’s 36 states.

Reports indicated that Buhari scaled the hurdle in 34 states, while the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Nigeria’s former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, came second with 11,262,978 votes.

But Atiku has vowed to challenge the results of the election in court, owing to what he termed alleged irregularities; even as local and international observers have affirmed the overall credibility of the elections despite pockets of violence in a few states. In the words of the European Union Elections Observation Mission (EU EOM), they gave the election a pass mark, despite some “operational shortcomings”.

Although, many Nigerians believe that Atiku reserves the right to challenge the election in court, thereis to however a growing consensus that he should rather concede defeat, for the common good, with some pundits saying,  what the country needs at the moment is an intensification of its economic diversification, scaling of its infrastructural drive and fortification of its territories against insurgency.

Even as several Western media may have concluded that President Muhammadu Buhari’s re-election is as a result of his honesty, integrity, there are evidences that Nigerians believe that there is need for at least four more years for the administration to finish the projects being undertaken across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.

Those who hold this view contend that a new government often means abandonment of projects. To the credit of the Buhari Administration, it has been completing many projects abandoned for many years by previous successive governments.

Prior to the elections, while urging Nigerians to make a “sensible choice” of retaining President Buhari, the Minister of Power, Works and Housing Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola had put it succinctly: “Fundamentals of the economy are heading in the right direction. What we need to do is to consolidate on that.”

Indeed, according to the latest report of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), issued a few days to the presidential election, before it was postponed for a week, many of the economic indices showed positive performances. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew at about 2.38 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018. The growth in real terms (year-on-year) rose from about 1.81 percent in the previous quarter of the year. Pundits see it as a good performance, despite warnings from economists that more needed to be done to stem unemployment.

In sectors such as agriculture, which recorded annual GDP growth of about 14.27 per cent, higher than 11.29 per cent recorded in 2017, the sector contributed about 23.08 percent to nominal GDP in Q4 of 2018, as against 21.93 per cent in the corresponding period in 2017.

Available data also indicated that Nigeria’s drive to be self-sufficiency in the production of rice is being relentlessly pursued. Indeed, according to the Africa Rice Center, Africa’s foremost research organisation on rice, with its production of 4 million tonnes a year, Nigeria now ranks the highest producer of rice in Africa.

Manufacturing recorded 10.11 per cent in the last quarter of 2018, as against 8.53 in the corresponding period in 2017 and third quarter performance of 2018.

Manufacturing PMI, according to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), which had, for many months, recorded expansions rose, to an all-time high of 61.10 in December 2018, although it fell to 57.1 in February 2019.

In his 2019 State of the Union address, President of the United States of America, Mr. Donald Trump admonished opposing parties to  reject “the politics of revenge, resistance, and retribution” andembrace “the boundless potential of cooperation, compromise, and the common good.”

For all contestants to various elective offices in Nigeria’s political season, pundits say, Trump’s charge to the opposition parties in the US should be the mantra, while they wait on Buhari to walk his talk to wit: “the new administration will intensify its efforts in Security, Restructuring the Economy and Fighting Corruption. We have laid down the foundation and we are committed to seeing matters to the end. We will strive to strengthen our unity and inclusiveness so that no section or group will feel left behind or left out.”