What really happened in the 2023 general elections? Why is it in the news again 18 months after, with a notable speaker, Dr Sam Amadi, saying in a widely circulated video that, “INEC and the judiciary destroyed the 2023 elections,” and that all you need to win an election in Nigeria is to “bribe INEC, bribe the judiciary and commandeer the security and you are done?” The answer to both questions, I argue, lies not in the electoral processes or outcomes of the 2023 elections, but in the virulent election denialism that followed it.
For emphasis, what is the key difference between the 2015 presidential election, widely regarded as among Nigeria’s best ever, and its 2023 counterpart, still the object of strident attacks? The answer is simple. In the 2015 election, then incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan accepted the outcome and INEC and its officials were rightly celebrated. In the 2023 election, however, INEC – and Nigerian democracy – came up against the brick wall of election denialism. Had Jonathan not accepted defeat, that election would not enjoy the standing in our electoral history that it rightly does today, because the false narrative that the election was rigged by a certain Orubebe would have held sway and overshadowed everything else, not to mention the deadly chaos that could have ensued. Likewise, the loud denialism against the 2023 election has prevented us from recognising the vast improvements in our elections that 2023 brought forth.
Nigeria’s 2011, 2015 and 2019 elections were widely acclaimed to have grown markedly in quality and integrity by local and international observers, compared to those in 2007, 2003 and 1999. Before 2011, opposition party candidates almost never won against incumbents in our elections. Since 2011, however, opposition party candidates have won against incumbents in presidential, gubernatorial, senatorial and other elections. For example, of the seven off-season governorship elections since 2020 in Edo, Anambra, Ekiti, Osun, Bayelsa, Imo and Kogi states, four were won by parties not in control of the federal government, and three by the APC, the ruling party at the centre. Elections conclusively overturned by courts have also reduced significantly since 2011: four between 2003 and 2010, but just two after 2011.
In addition, the gap between the winning and runner-up candidates in our presidential elections has reduced considerably since 2011, a key metric of quality and integrity, given our dwindling voter turnout. Where the gap between Obasanjo and Buhari in 2003, and Yar’adua and Buhari in 2007, was above 12 million and 18 million votes respectively, the gap between Buhari and Jonathan in 2015 and Buhari and Atiku in 2019 was just over three million votes in each case. In 2023, the gap between Tinubu and Atiku tightened to less than two million votes, indicating the growing impossibility of “vote padding” in our presidential elections; at least.
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These factual indications all point towards a growing independence of INEC, and the improvements in the processes and outcomes of its elections since 2011. The 2023 election actually built upon these gains in our electoral system by a wide margin. First, the 2023 elections produced the most diverse outcomes in terms of the representation of opposition parties and candidates than in all previous elections since 1999 combined. Five parties (LP, NNPP, SDP, ADC and ADP) won a total of 70 National Assembly seats for the very first time in their history, in addition to APC, PDP, APGA, and YPP that previously held seats before 2023. NNPP won a governorship seat for the first time, and LP won another for only the second time in history. Moreover, seven incumbent governors lost their bids for senatorial seats in the 2023 elections, against four who lost in 2015. In fact, both the chairs of Senate and House of Representatives committees on INEC , Kabiru Gaya and Aisha Dukku, respectively, lost their reelection bids.
In short, the 2023 election is consistent with the trend of improved quality and integrity in our elections since 2011 in every respect, if not better. Nothing demonstrates this fact than the performance of the Labour Party and NNPP. Both were created 20 full years before the 2023 election, but languished in obscurity, winning almost nothing in five general election cycles. Between them today, they hold two governorship seats, 63 National Assembly seats, and an even higher number of state assembly seats across the country. These parties and their candidates must tell Nigerians how much they paid in bribe to INEC and the judiciary to achieve this feat. Otherwise, the reasons are clearly two: the election was free and fair, and the Electoral Act 2022 – itself championed by INEC – which allowed more time for campaigns before Election Day.
So, what really happened in the 2023 elections? The answer is also simple. The facts of the 2023 elections have been buried by the crude election denialism of a vocal minority. But Nigeria’s election deniers wield enormous cultural power within Nigeria and beyond, the sort of power the late American economist, Albert O. Hirschman memorably calls “voice”; that is, the effective and collective power to be heard, to be paid attention to, or make change happen. This is otherwise a positive power, but it is sadly being wasted on election denialism, thereby doing much harm to our democracy. But to illustrate how this cultural power has clouded the reality of the 2023 elections, let us look outside the political field for a moment.
In July, 2023, then 19-year-old Mmesoma Ejikeme forged her university entrance examination result, claiming to have had the overall best score of 362. The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) refuted that claim in a statement. Still, millions believed her words against the institution that conducted the exam and the professor who leads it. We all remember how that saga ended, but that it happened at all is illustrative of the cultural power in reference here: some people have more effective collective power to be heard and paid attention to in Nigerian affairs than others. Had I made the same claim against JAMB, most Nigerians would have dismissed it outright, if they paid attention to it at all, even with my PhD from a top UK university.
In other words, Nigeria’s election deniers have a cultural power in Nigerian affairs that INEC simply cannot match, so the facts of the election are silenced and the doubts about it are pronounced and amplified. When a towering figure like Chimamanda Adichie says your election is fraudulent, you are simply cooked, even though her merely saying so does not make it true.
This is where we arrive at the crux of the matter. The LP candidate and former Governor of Anambra State, Mr Peter Obi, did not win the 2023 presidential election. Obi actually overachieved and outperformed all realistic expectations last year – again precisely because the election was free and fair – and he may well better that performance in the future. But to think that he won, were it not for non-real time transmission of results electronically, is to stretch matters into the realm of illusion, or worse, delusion. The results are still on the portal, and INEC has shown that it will grant access to them on request to anyone to check them out.
As former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and runner-up candidate in the same election said shortly after, Obi only took the votes that had traditionally belonged to the PDP in its strongholds of the South East, South South and parts of the North Central. Atiku was actually stating a timeless constant of elections everywhere: whenever a voting bloc splits into two without gaining enough to compensate for the split, then both are likely to lose the next election if other competing blocs hold. Third party candidates scarcely win national elections in a field dominated by two parties. Everyone in democratic politics knows this. But election denial is not about facts or time-tested conventions.
For sure, INEC is not perfect, and the 2023 elections had their problems in many areas. But the results represent an advancement in quality and integrity than anything we had before. We may not want to give INEC the credit they deserve for it, but we also don’t have to pull down our most performing institutions merely because they do not meet our interests or expectations.
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