Why is the US the world’s economic and military super power, respected worldwide, relatively stable and almost always ‘gifted’ with strong leadership? There are so many arguments that could be put forward, but one often overlooked is the country’s ingenious process for electing her president. I will come to that shortly.

Why is Nigeria often bedeviled by economic woes, incompetent and incredibly nepotistic leadership and international ignominy on the military front despite her potentials? There are so many excuses that could be made, but corruption and ‘our mentality as a people’ (this particular ignorant argument is so laughable) is just a symptom. Take care of the root of the ‘disease’ that sprouts the symptoms, and the surface should considerably heal.

What am I on about? You see, there’s a common denominator in the two situational analyses above. LEADERSHIP.

But first, to clarify, I’m making this comparison with the US because we share some unique characteristics compared to, for example, the UK, Germany, France etc. Both countries have high population, vast amount of natural resources; a workforce made up of go-getters and pacesetters in a nation that is culturally and ethnically diverse (Yes, the US has Hispanics, Latinos, Native Indians, African Americans, Asian Americans etc).

Now to the kernel of my argument. In the 2015 general election, unknown to most people, there was a fundamental shift in the voting pattern in Nigeria that I think set a dangerous precedent.

You see, if you closely study it, you will discover the Nigerian constitution has a weakness on the electoral process for choosing a president. It says to emerge as president; the candidate must score a simple majority plus 2/3 of the states. For the first time since the fourth republic, this constitutional vulnerability was fully exploited by the major beneficiaries today.

To score 2/3 of the 36 states in Nigeria, it means you earn a simple majority plus 24 states. Since the constitution did not say the 24 states should be nationally spread, Messrs Tinubu and Buhari decided to pull together 2 regionally dominant parties (CPC and ACN) to create a semblance of a national party, APC. The disingenuous plan/calculation was that Tinubu would pull 6 states from a single region while Buhari pulls the rest from 2 or 3 regions within the same larger region and pronto, they get their 24 states!

In essence, 2 regions produce a president that presides over the entire country; thereby leading to a tyranny of the majority over the minority.
Still wondering why the president doesn’t have a care in the world about the need to be truly pan-Nigeria and less nepotistic in his speech, approach and sentiments – unlike how a US president is naturally built to be? Still wondering why the president is fanatically supported in the SW and North? There you have your answer! ‘Corruption’ is just an alibi. It is mostly sentiments.

Even sadly so, his paid promoters gloat about this epic flaw in a supposed national president, deriding the rest of the country that they don’t matter in the scheme of electing the president. Even yesterday, the closed-minded and puny-brained Ahmed Bashir tweeted the fact the president is a regional vote seeker!

Of course, after willy-nilly getting to the centre, opportunists like Okorocha, Amechi, Sagay, Keyamo, Onochie and co will jump on the bandwagon to give the president and party a semblance of a national outlook. They have duly been rewarded with spokesmanship roles as a divide and rule gimmick.

While this constitutional defect has always been there, no past president has really exploited it. Votes for previous presidents have always been nationally spread, acknowledged and accepted – even going back to 1993 and Abiola.

Now to the electoral correlation with the US. The United States have strong leaders term after term, mostly thanks to the Electoral College.
So, what was the wisdom behind enshrining the Electoral College in the US Constitution by the nation’s Founding Fathers?

1. To prevent states with larger populations from having undue influence.

2. The Electoral College ensures that all parts of the country are involved in selecting the President of the United States. If the election depended solely on the popular vote, then candidates could limit campaigning to heavily-populated areas or specific regions.

3. To win the election, presidential candidates need electoral votes from multiple regions and therefore they build campaign platforms with a national focus, meaning that the winner will actually be serving the needs of the entire country.

This is how it works. The Electoral College consists of 538 electors. A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the President. Your state’s entitled allotment of electors equals the number of members in its Congressional delegation: one for each member in the House of Representatives plus two for your Senators.

While Donald Trump lost the general election to Hillary Clinton by over 2.8 million votes, he won the Electoral College by 74 votes. The official general election results indicate that Trump received 304 Electoral College votes and 46.09% of the popular vote (62,984,825 votes), and Hillary Clinton received 227 Electoral College votes and 48.18% of the popular vote (65,853,516 votes).

Let me conclude by saying that there are some of us who are fine-tuning this proposal to push to the National Assembly for amendment of the constitution. Even if it is not treated now, it will sometime in the future and current nepotistic presidents who would perhaps be retired then will be ashamed that the new law heavily indicts them.

Seun, Lalastica, dominique and Mynd 44, it will be well appreciated if this is given the exposure and debate it deserves by pushing it to the front page. Thank you.

The Republican Party (Donald Trump) are the RED states, while Democratic Party (Hillary Clinton) are the BLUE states. Donald won more states (national spread), Clinton won more popular votes but wanted to take advantage of mass sentiments. Except he changes his mentality, Buhari cannot win an election in a million years with the far superior, more pan-national Electoral College system.

While I agree with most of the issues you raised, I still think the the electoral college system would be a disaster in Nigeria..

Why

1. The electoral college system are representatives from various states, and the number of representatives per state is directly proportional to the number of senators and house representatives from that state. Which means that regions with much states would have more numbers in the electoral college voters. Eg for example.. out of the 109 senators the North has 57..
West has 18
SS and SE has 33
FTC has 1..

And this same disproportionality applies in the house of representatives too. So for the sake of cumbersome figures let's work with jus senate numbers..

So let's say the electoral college demands a simple majority vote to win election or a little over half of the delegates, it means that the north would always produce the president and no other region would have a shot. According to ur figure of the USA electoral college, it's takes 270/538 to produce a president. This is jus a number more than half(ie a simple majority). If u replicate this in Nigeria it means that the north alone, having 57/109 senators would not need any other zone to produce the president..

And if we chose to say 2/3 of the electoral college (which is the much we could demand) it means that the North could just team up with the SW and produce the president and vice indefinitely..

2. Electoral college system would be very easy to manipulate in Nigeria jus as the party delegates in primary elections. The highest bidders would pay off the representatives. While they smile to the banks, the masses would go home weeping..

3. It'd entrust so much powers on the ruling class so that they'd not have to care about the opinions of the populace, as far as they can induce the electoral college delegates with huge sums of money.

4. Just like the senators and house of reps we have today, how can you be sure their candidates would represent the choice of their constituents? They'd be out for their personal interests.

So In my opinion.. the best reform would be the candidate must win with a simple majority, plus a certain percentage (say 20%)of votes casted in each region/states.

This would make the president know that he has to be popular in each state and regions. Hence must never relegate each region..