Nigeria, Africa’s biggest economy and most populous country, is getting ready to elect political leaders for the next four years. Research conducted by the International Crisis Group (ICG) from September 2022 to January 2023 shows that the general election will be different in six ways from the previous ones.
Three-horse race and projected ‘first-ever run-off’
Unlike past elections, which had two major contenders, the 2023 presidential election features a third force; the battle for votes is between Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, and Peter Obi of the Labour Party.
According to the study, there is a slight possibility that none of them will get 25 percent of the vote in two-thirds of the states, which is what is needed to win outright. If that happens, it would be the first time the country would see a run-off election.
Youngest voters
The ICG, an independent organisation that shapes policies to promote a peaceful world, said the 2023 elections will include the country’s largest-ever most youthful electorate.
“More than 90 million Nigerians, in a population estimated at over 210 million, are eligible to vote in 2023,” the report said. “That number is considerably larger than the 84 million who could cast ballots in 2019 and bigger than the electorate of West Africa’s fourteen other countries combined.”
This position is backed up by data from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that show that 76 percent or 7.28 million of the new voters are between the ages of 18 and 34, a 51 percent increase from the 2019 election.
The ICG added that this rise in young voters could be linked to the fact that many young people got involved in politics in October 2020 when they protested against police brutality. This gave them a sense of their power to push for a better government.
Technology
The next factor that differentiates the 2023 poll is the Electoral Act of 2022, which allows the 2023 polls to feature innovations including the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, which combines fingerprint and face biometrics to verify voters’ identities and the electronic transmission of results from polling units directly to the INEC Result Viewing Portal.
Highest number of voters
The ICG’s research, titled ‘Mitigating Risks of Violence in Nigeria’s 2023 Elections’, said the 2023 polls would witness the largest electorate in Nigerian history.
Early in January, INEC released its final voter list, which had 93.4 million people on it, up from 84 million in the 2019 election (an increase of 11 percent). The larger number of registered voters may add new logistical challenges to the 2023 vote.
Highest turnout
“Turnout could also be higher than in the past,” the research predicted. “Participation in Nigerian elections had declined over the years, from 52.26 percent and 69.08 percent of registered voters in 1999 and 2003, respectively, to 43.65 percent in 2015 and 34.75 percent in 2019—but several factors could lead more people to the polls in 2023.”
“INEC’s innovations, which curtailed rigging in recent gubernatorial elections in Anambra, Ekiti, and Osun states, have boosted public confidence in the credibility of elections; many more voters now trust that their votes will count,” it added.
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Violence
The ICG’s research indicated that there would be a higher chance of violence than in the past.
“There was only one major threat during the 2015 and 2019 elections, and that was from Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) in the North East, but now there are a lot of other armed groups,” the study said.
“Notably, dangerous criminal gangs (called ‘bandits’ locally) and jihadists are active in parts of the North West, while Biafra separatist agitators (and sometimes criminals) are active in the South East.”
The organisation said a peaceful election is important for the ability of the winner to run the country and for the stability of the country as a whole. “It would also help Nigeria’s reputation when it comes to fighting against coups in Africa,” it added.
