The ousting of an incumbent president at the
ballot box in Africa’s most populous country
marks a hopeful step for democracy across the continent

ECSTATIC crowds engulfed Kano’s streets as it
became clear that Muhammadu Buhari, a former
military strongman who ruled Nigeria in the 1980s,
had led an opposition party to victory in a presidential
contest for the first time in the country’s history.
Passengers piled on top of lorries waved the national flag as drivers honked their horns in northern
Nigeria’s biggest city. Jubilant drumbeating revellers
shouted the name of the man back in the seat of
power after an absence of three decades.

“We will celebrate for seven days,” said Aliyu
Haruna Aliyu, a farmer outside the headquarters of Mr
Buhari’s All Progressives Congress. “We have won
the most free and fair election ever to take place in
Nigeria. This is a new Nigeria.” It is indeed a watershed for Africa’s biggest
democracy and most populous country, 170m-strong.
The defeated president, Goodluck Jonathan, graciously
conceded defeat, acknowledging that the rule of his
People’s Democratic Party, unbroken since the
generals gave way to a civilian government in 1999, had ended. Mr Buhari, a northern Muslim who led a coup in 1983,
had fought the three previous elections in vain. This
time he won all the northern states but also made
inroads in the south and centre, easily meeting the
electoral requirement that the winner must get at
least a quarter of the votes in two-thirds of the 36 states to show support across the tribal and sectarian
spectrum.

The party has a lot to prove. It has proclaimed itself
the harbinger of change, winning over voters
disgusted by their government’s dishonesty and its
failure to end an Islamist insurgency in the north-east
that has cost at least 15,000 lives. Despite the brutally repressive regime headed by Mr
Buhari in the 1980s, people are putting enormous faith
in him. His fierce denunciation of corruption and his
frugal lifestyle appeal to the poor, who make up the
majority of Nigerians. Many of them think it will take a
former general to root out the corruption rampant in the upper echelons of the army and to defeat the
jihadists. “We will end Boko Haram,” his party’s
posters promised.

But Mr Buhari will be hamstrung from the start by an
economy that relies massively on oil for government
revenue and foreign exchange. The federal coffers
have emptied as the price of oil has tumbled. Mr
Buhari says he will make up the difference by cutting
waste and corruption. Yet some of his most senior party men are crooks. Moreover, as a Muslim from the north, Mr Buhari may
find it hard to contain violence in the Niger delta, in the
south. Fighters in that oil-producing region laid down
their arms in 2009 and have since grown fat on
amnesty payments and dodgy security contracts.
Some of them promised to return to war if Mr Buhari’s lot, who are expected to do away with the
expensive peace pact, won. Mr Jonathan, a Christian from the delta, had banked on
landslide wins in that region. He did notch up a hefty
vote there, but people failed to turn out for him in the
same dedicated masses as Mr Buhari’s fans in the
north. In Kano, the second most populous state,
almost 2m people queued for hours in the baking sun to cast their votes for him, whereas Mr Jonathan’s
tally there was paltry. Mr Buhari also won Lagos,
Nigeria’s burgeoning commercial capital, whose GDP
exceeds that of many west African countries. He
swung a lot of voters who had previously backed Mr
Jonathan onto his side in the south-west and in the so- called middle belt, defying the conventional wisdom
that Nigerians vote almost entirely along ethnic and
religious lines. The poll was still marred by technical glitches, Boko
Haram terror and concerns that the electoral
commission might succumb to political interference in
collating the figures. But Attahiru Jega, the
commission’s indefatigable head, has received well-
deserved plaudits for maintaining his independence in overseeing the process. He withstood government
pressure to ban new permanent voter cards and
biometric readers which, despite teething problems,
made box-stuffing harder. “Analogue rigging met
digital countermeasures,” said Tunji Lardner, a civil-
society campaigner. “Analogue lost.” The current government has another two months in
power. A peaceful handover at the end of May would
send a telling signal to leaders elsewhere in Africa,
some of whom want to breach their constitutional
term limits. Meanwhile Nigerians hope that their first-
ever ejection of an incumbent president at the ballot box marks the maturing of their democracy. “If
things are not better with Buhari”, says Aisha Musa,
a housewife in Kano, “we will get rid of him in four
years’ time.” source: http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21647596-ousting-incumbent-president-ballot-box-africas-most-populous-country-marks-hopeful?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/hailtodemocracy