However, even for a country with a history of quasi-omnipresent disorder, Nigeria faces an unprecedented set of challenges. Inflation is at a record 22% and at least one in three Nigerians is jobless. Despite the fast-growing population, there has been an almost complete absence of economic growth for a decade, resulting in millions of Nigerians abandoning their homeland. 

Although blessed with abundant oil and gas reserves, Nigeria endures constant power outages and fuel shortages. Insecurity and crime are rife, and there are at least two major Islamist insurgencies in the north, a separatist conflict in the southeast and several sectarian disputes across the country. Kidnapping is rife. 

Finally, a botched attempt to replace high-denomination currency notes less than a month before the general election descended into chaos, with long lines of people forming outside cash machines and fights breaking out inside banks as customers demanded access to their own money. 

Essentially, Nigeria is at risk of falling apart.

More immediately, though, are the questions of the election itself. What Nigeria needed above all was a transparent and fair contest to ensure the basic promise of democracy is alive and well. Sadly, that is far from what transpired. 

Ostensibly won by the former governor and self-styled godfather of Lagos, the wealthy political manoeuvring Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress, the election was, at the very least, badly mismanaged. Opposition parties have declared it a sham. 

Nigeria’s Independent National Election Commission clearly failed to deliver. Voting on a new electronic ballot system started late in many districts, depriving millions of the right to vote. The system uploading results then failed, raising suspicions of tampering, while there are widespread reports of intimidation in polling stations. Turnout was pitifully low, at 27%, which the opposition maintains was due to voter fear. 

It was not meant to happen like this. 

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After serving his maximum of two terms, former president Muhammadu Buhari stated he was stepping down to make way for a fresh face at the helm of this west African colossus, and for the first time in Nigeria’s fourth republic, there was a third entrant. 

Challenging the ageing and allegedly corrupt Tinubu and equally antediluvian Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party was an exciting new contestant: Peter Obi and his Labour Party. 

Backed by many of Nigeria’s urban and educated middle class, especially among the young, he had been tipped as the first serious challenger to the gerontocracy that has ruled the country since the 1998 demise of Sani Abacha’s military junta. 

With Obi leading in the polls prior to the election, commentators called this the first genuine opportunity of a fresh start for Nigeria in decades.

Obi, who had based his campaign on mobilising younger voters disenchanted with the out-of-touch political elite, told reporters at a press conference on Thursday that his Labour Party would explore all “legal and peaceful options to reclaim our mandate. We won the election and we’ll prove it to Nigerians.” Second-placed Abubakar has also called for a rerun. A prolonged dispute risks tipping an already precarious status quo into anarchy. 

Even if the result stands and somehow reflects the broader will of the people, Tinubu faces one of the toughest jobs imaginable. First, he will need to stabilise the economy. Then, major reforms to the police and military are needed to reinstate security across the country, especially in those areas threatened by insurgencies and secession.

The toxic confluence of problems besetting Nigeria has not only been a handbrake on African economic growth, but it has destabilised the region and caused mass humanitarian and immigration crises as far away as Europe and South Africa. 

Africa, and the world, needs a Nigeria that works for its voters and youth. 

If managed well, it remains a country with enormous potential and resources. Sadly, it is unlikely that this recent farce of an election will provide that. BM/DM