On April 16, 2011, Nigeria held its much-anticipated presidential election. It was won by the incumbent, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, whose party has been in power since the country returned to democracy in 1999.
On April 16, 2011, Nigeria held its much-anticipated presidential election. It was won by the incumbent, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, whose party has been in power since the country returned to democracy in 1999.
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Although the local media and international election observers have commended the election as relatively transparent and the result fair, leading opposition candidate, Major General Muhammadu Buhari, insists that the process was rigged, citing as evidence results from the South-East and South-south zones of the country where recorded voters’ turnout in the presidential elections doubled the national average.
The fall-out of the election has indeed brought to fore the challenge highlighted by Freedom House about “dominant-party states in which multi party systems exist on paper but genuine electoral competition is suppressed”. This was the view reinforced by Paul Collier in the Wall Street Journal where he argued that it would take more than voting to bring about change in a continent where supporting institutions are lacking and where elections “have proved to be more decorative than functional, a veneer beneath which autocratic rule of the pre-1991 era continues.”
It is, however, not in his pessimism about democracy in Africa that Collier’s thesis is useful, it is the manner in which he dissected the “key crooked tactics” usually associated with incumbent elections such as voter bribery, voter intimidation and ballot fraud: “In each of them the incumbent has an advantage. Bribery needs money, but as long as the national budget is leaky the president has more of it than the opponents. Voter intimidation needs forces of violence, but the president likely has the police and the army. Ballot fraud needs the subservience of election officials, who may well be presidential placemen…”
It bears reiterating that while alternation of leaders at election periods does not necessarily translate into genuine democracy for any country, it has nonetheless become one of the main criteria for measuring the success or otherwise of representative government. From Samuel Huntington to Gideon Maltz, the consensus is that transfer of power between one national leader and another based on the votes of the citizenry remains the most defining element of competitive democracy. Yet the narrative of elections in Africa is that of a process which presents little or no risk of defeat to the incumbent.
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With a cycle of elections that merely serves as vehicles not for change but rather for legitimizing the status quo, there is now a compelling argument that the surest way to ensure that votes are counted and that they count is through open-seat elections. This is premised on the expectation that without the incumbent power holder on the ballot, there will be a level-playing field on which all contenders could compete. While this remains an ideal around which advocates of regime alternation easily mobilize as a necessary condition for change, it is my contention that defeating the ruling party/incumbent requires the creation of strategic coalitions of political parties in which personal ambitions are sacrificed for group goals.
Before going further, it is appropriate to make a distinction between the use and misuse of incumbency in the governing process which is not the focus of this paper and the implication of what happens when an incumbent is seeking re-election. The idea is to show very clearly that attempts to conduct transparent elections are imperiled when an incumbent office holder seeks to stay in power beyond the mandate of the people which is often the case in the continent. Nothing explains this better than the number of attempts to circumvent the principle of term-limits in countries where it is already enshrined in the constitution. It stands to reason that leaders who see nothing wrong in changing the rules-or at least making attempts to do so-in promotion of personal ambition, would have no qualms about tampering with the electoral process if that is the only way that could guarantee their continued stay in power.
This is, however, not entirely an African malaise notwithstanding the prevalence of such abuse within the continent where “presidency for life” is a legacy bequeathed by post-independence leaders. Yet Aristotle argues that “a man should not hold the same office twice”, and that “the tenure of all offices, or of as many as possible, should be brief”. Modern attempts at term-limits are, however, traceable to Latin America where framers of the constitution recognized very early that it could not be left to the benevolence of office holders. Because of the inherent abuse associated with long stay in office, 18th century Venezuelan military and political leader, Simon Bolivar had argued that nothing was more perilous than to permit one citizen to retain power for an extended period.
It is within this context that one can situate the drama currently evolving in Guatemala between President Alvaro Colom, (due to leave office in September) and his wife, Ms Sandra Torres who is plotting to succeed him.
While Article 186 of Guatemala’s constitution forbids relatives of the president from seeking elective office, the First Lady announced on March 11 this year that she and her husband had completed the process of a “divorce” by mutual consent. "I am getting a divorce from my husband, but I am getting married to the people. I am not going to be the first or the last woman who decides to get a divorce, but I am the only woman to get a divorce for her country," says the president’s wife in justifying what critics in Guatemala see as a clever ploy by the first family to circumvent the law.
From Evo Morales in Bolivia to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, the principle of term-limit is now under serious assault from incumbent power holders who would go any length to subvert the democratic process in the bid to cling on to power. Maltx highlighted this challenge in his thesis on 26 countries that contravened the principle of presidential term limits between 1992 and 2006 against the backdrop that 87 countries had it enshrined in their constitution.
Sit-tight Syndrome in Africa
The African case is, however, rather peculiar going by the manner in which sitting leaders manipulate the process to perpetuate themselves in office. In July 2008, the Senegalese legislature approved a constitutional amendment which increased the length of the presidential term from five to seven years, as it was before the 2001 constitution came into force. Even though this extension ordinarily should not apply to President Abdullahi Wade's 2007–2012 term, Justice Minister, Madicke Niang, has already hinted that nothing precluded the president from seeking what would be an extra-constitutional third term in 2012. With a caveat that borders more on the divine than the legality of any such aspiration, Wade himself has confirmed the speculation by saying he indeed could run for a third term in 2012 "if God gives me a long life."
In Djibouti, President Omar Guellah demonstrated the highest form of ruthlessness in the violent referendum held to put an end to term-limits in his country and in the presidential election that followed, Guellah secured 144,433 of the validly cast 144,433 votes! The story of Niger is as tragic. On May 26, 2009, President Mamadou Tandja dissolved the country’s parliament after the constitutional court ruled against the referendum held in the country so he could seek a third term in office. The crisis engenderd by his sit-tight plots ultimately led to the demise of democracy in Niger as the military took over power in a coup d’etat.
Where Tandja failed, others before him had succeeded. For instance, a constitutional amendment in Guinea paved way for Lansana Conteh to serve an extra seven-year term and in the highly manipulated 2004 general elections, he won with 95 percent of the votes. The late President Omar Bongo of Gabon was more practical in his approach: by a sleight of hand, he got the parliament to endorse his plan to run as many times as he wished until death separated him from power.
With this disposition by incumbent African leaders, it is not too difficult to understand why elections within the continent that should ordinarily serve as “the ultimate arbiter of political differences as well as the guarantor of peace, stability and security, have become a major source of conflict and political violence.”
It is also understandable that the Freedom House Countries at Crossroads survey continually lists several African countries as places where impediments remain on civic engagements and fundamental freedoms essentially because they “have overstepped an elemental aspect of governance: rotation of power”. The political systems in these jurisdictions, according to the 2010 report, are “not open to the rise and fall of competing political parties and groupings and no interchange of government and opposition has occurred in at least the past ten years. Instead, power is retained indefinitely by an individual or through the managed transfer of power within families or party hierarchies.”
Interestingly, 42 of the 52 countries in Africa now run multi-party democracy of different variants with the president elected directly by the people for a renewable fixed term. Ironically, it is only Libya (where Muammah Ghadafi has been in power for 42 years now) that doesn’t conduct periodic elections of any form aside Somalia which has for long descended into anarchy. It is noteworthy though that products of the multi-party presidential elections include Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, who has been in office since January 26, 1986 and has just been inaugurated for another five-year term; Paul Biya of Cameroon (since November 6, 1982); Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe (since April 18, 1980); Yahya Jammeh of Gambia (since July 22, 1994); Blaise Compaore of Burkina Faso (since October 15, 1987); Jose Eduardo dos Santos of Angola (since September 10, 1979); Idriss Deby of Chad (since December 2, 1990); Umar al-Bashir of Sudan (since June 30, 1989) and Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria (since April 27, 1999). It took the “Arab Spring” to oust Hosni Mubarak (after 30 years as Egyptian president) and Tunisian Abidine Ben Ali (after 24 years) from power while Meles Zenawi who assumed office on August 23, 1995 remains Prime Minister of Ethiopia through a quasi-parliamentary system that is akin to a dictatorship.
The case for Open-seat elections
The foregoing environment certainly is not one that can nurture competitive elections. It is therefore no surprise that so dangerously predictable an enterprise has incumbent election in the continent become that it is now usually preceded by violence, most often undertaken with impunity and sometimes followed by war. For months, the acclaimed winner of the December 2010, presidential election in Cote D’Ivoire, Mr Allasane Ouattara was barricaded inside a hotel and surrounded by troops loyal to the man he defeated while the country descended into violence. Even when there were calls from ECOWAS, the African Union and the United Nations for then incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo to step down, it took the intervention of French military forces to oust him and his wife from the presidential palace.
Proponents of elections without incumbents point to the human and material costs usually associated with such contests within the continent. The recent election in Kenya which ended with a hybrid government, (but only after thousands of lives had been lost and almost half a million displaced), is another clear testimony. In Zimbabwe the never-ending tragic drama which began with the 2007 elections between incumbent President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai shows no sign of abating.
Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, is not immune from such election crisis. In explaining the recent post-presidential election orgy of violence in the Northern parts of the country which claimed the lives of several NYSC members, the Buhari-led Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) described them as the consequence of a win-at-all-cost mentality of the sitting president. “To us in the CPC, it is our belief that the breakdown of law and order that ensued after the declaration of President Goodluck Jonathan as the president-elect on the basis of concocted results was the by-product of the determination to win elections by incumbents by any means which has always characterized such actions by historical antecedence.”
The take-away from the statement, which has been heavily criticized as justifying violence, is that to the Nigerian opposition, the most plausible reason why they lost the election was the factor of incumbency. While not disputing their claims (any time the incumbent president wins re-election or candidate of ruling party is elected in Nigeria, it is always attributed to rigging), it doesn’t address the critical issue which we shall come back to later.
It must, however, be noted that a comparison of elections held when the incumbent is not on the ballot with those where power holders seek re-election indeed shows very clearly that there are variations in results. Statistics reveals that competitive presidential elections held in sub-Saharan Africa in the last two decades have resulted in 96 percent victory for the incumbent whereas when the incumbent was not on the ballot, candidates of the ruling party won only 60 percent of the time. Applying the same principle to the rest of the world, incumbents have been successful at the polls 93 percent of the time while successor-candidates won only 67 percent of the time. What this means in effect is that there is not much difference between Africa and the rest of the world with respect to “incumbency factor”, what is peculiar to the continent is the absence of strong institutions which then makes the electoral process vulnerable to manipulation by some incumbents.
Collier identifies three components of electoral fraud from the perspectives of incumbency within the continent and they are: Lack of autonomy on the part of the election management board which may be a mere tool for the incumbent; deployment of public money to corrupt the electoral process and the misuse of the security agencies and media manipulation/harassment in pursuit of same agenda. While there is no space to dissect these issues which I have critically examined elsewhere, my summation remains that failure to form viable opposition coalition provides a better explanation for why incumbents always win in Africa. It is therefore more productive to go beyond the usual suspect by looking at the behaviour of the opposition within the continent.
Opposition coalition: The unconsidered variable
At a recent lecture in Washington, Kenyan Prime Minister, Mr. Raila Odinga, said the disposition of some African leaders to election is pushing the continent towards a new era of authoritarianism. “Incumbents are coercing electoral commissions to skew the polls in their favour and then, when their opponents protest, they resort to force. Many thousands die and are displaced, until the international community steps in to work out some kind of power-sharing arrangement,” he said.
To buttress his position, Odinga catalogued several untoward developments like the situation in Gabon and Togo where “the deaths of long-serving dictators Omar Bongo and Gnassingbe Eyadema created room for elections in which power was smoothly transferred – to their sons”. He added that in some countries, “elections are being won by incumbents after intimidation of opposition supporters. It is telling that, for the past two years, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, which offers the world’s richest prize to African leaders who help develop their countries and then peacefully leave office, has decided to make no award. No leaders met the standards.”
Odinga was indeed apt in dissecting some of the problems associated with incumbent elections in Africa. He, however, took no responsibility for the inability of the opposition to put aside their differences until after the election has been lost when they usually gang up to shout rigging. He particularly failed to recognise or admit that by being factionalised opposition parties become susceptible to manipulations by government in power hence easier to defeat. Odinga himself is a good demonstration of this fact.
While the Kenyan opposition blames the 2007 presidential election defeat on rigging by the incumbent-a valid point given what transpired-analysis of the results reveals nonetheless that the outcome could still have been different had the coalition which protested the election been in place before the contest. To properly understand this, one would have to review results not only from 2007 but also the two elections preceding it both of which lend credence to how opposition parties in Africa most often help the incumbent to win by default.
In 1997, President Daniel Arap Moi of the Kenya African Union (KANU) who had been in power for 19 years prior to the election won with 41 percent of the total votes cast. His main challenger, Mwai Kibaki of the Democratic Party secured 31 percent. There were, however, 13 other presidential contenders among them Raila Odinga of the National Development Party who garnered 11 percent. Each of Kijana Wamalwa of the Ford-Kenya and Charity Ngilu of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) also secured 8 percent of total votes cast.
With a plurality voting system based on First-Past-The-Post which didn’t require 50 percent for a winner to emerge, most observers believed that if Kibaki, Odinga and Wamalwa had rallied against Moi, the result would have been different. Of course one can easily argue that such crude arithmetic has little place in politics but the 2002 elections prove most poignantly that uniting against the incumbent power holder or the ruling party remains the surest way to win for the opposition. In the 2002 election, Moi was not on the ballot but he anointed a successor in Uhuru Kenyatta (son of founding President Jomo Kenyatta) whose main challenger remained the same Kibaki that Moi defeated five years earlier. This time, however, the opposition parties led by Kibaki, Odinga and Wamalwa were able to forge an alliance under the banner of National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) with Kibaki as candidate. He went on to win with an overwhelming majority of 61.3 percent of the votes cast.
By 2007 when Kibaki had become very unpopular, the expectation was that the opposition would unite to present a common candidate in the bid to oust him from power but they all went into the contest separately. Even while there were allegations of ballot rigging, the fact that he contested against several candidates helped Kibaki. Most analysts contend that the August 2007 split in the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) between Odinga and Musyoka and their inability to present a single candidate for the election cost the opposition the victory. For instance while Kibaki got 47 percent of the votes, Odinga got 44 percent while Muskoya got 9 percent. If Odinga had secured the support of Musyoka before the election, his victory would never have been in doubt and Kibaki would not have been able to steal the election.
While Odinga may have a point with regards to the Gabonese “family affair”, the opposition in Gabon should also share in the blame for what happened.
Following the death of Bongo, a multiparty presidential election was held in the country in August 2009 between 17 candidates one of which was Ali-Ben Bongo, son of the late president who ran on the platform of the ruling Gabonese Democratic Party. Even with the large field, the two main opposition figures were Pierre Mamboundou, candidate of a coalition of parties and Andre Mba Obame, who ran as an independent.
Before the election, many analysts predicted that the fractionalization of the opposition would only work to the advantage of the ruling party and at the end, Bongo secured 42 percent of the total votes which got him elected as president to replace his late father. Instructively, Obame garnered 26 percent of the votes while Mamboundou secured 25 percent. So effectively, between Obame and Mamboundou, the two opposition candidates who only united after the election to complain of rigging, they had 51 percent of the votes. Assuming the duo had worked together before the election, it would have been difficult for Bongo to win.
In a major work on the power of coalition in multi-party elections, Marc Morje Howard and Philip G. Rossler contend that when opposition parties join to present a common candidate the electorate gets a feeling that change is possible and voters are easily mobilized around such contender as a possible alternative. To put this in context, let us examine the results of the two other most recent presidential elections which descended into violence before some form of political/military solution was found for the crisis after the intervention of the international community. These are the elections in Cote D’Ivoire and Zimbabwe.
The crisis in Cote D’Ivoire seems to have been resolved with the May 6 swearing in of Allassane Quattara six months after the election but we may have to go back to the 2000 presidential elections to understand the nexus between opposition coalition and electoral victory. At the eve of the polls, then military ruler, Gen. Robert Guei, disqualified Ouattara and other opposition candidates. The only candidate he allowed to contest was Laurent Gbagbo whom he considered of no political consequence. Concluding that the outcome was already pre-determined, the United Nations-led election observers team pulled out of the country after condemning the planned election as a mere charade.
Even though the election witnessed low turn-out of voters, some opposition leaders rallied behind Gbagbo of the Ivoirian Popular Front who, with early results from the I’voirian Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), was leading. Evidently unprepared for such an outcome, Gwei disbanded the IEC, claiming ballot fraud and declared himself the winner. This led to street protests and several loss of lives until soldiers joined forces against Gwei who fled the country before Gbagbo could claim his mandate. Unfortunately, history had to repeat itself ten years later for Gbagbo himself to be forced out of power. But the lesson from the experience is that whenever opposition politicians unite behind one candidate which in 2000 was the result of an “unforced error” on the part of Gwei, the chances of ousting the incumbent become bright.
This became even clearer in the equally disputed 2010 elections. In the first round held on November 28, 2010 which was considered free, fair and transparent even by international observers, Gbagbo actually came first with 38 percent of the votes while Quattara came second with 32 percent. Erstwhile president Konan Bedie came third with 25 percent of the votes but would become a crucial factor in the second round between Gbagbo and Quattara. By tilting towards the latter, Gbagbo could only secure 46 percent of the votes to Quattara’s 54 percent. The Constitutional Court, however, reviewed this result to award Gbagbo 51 percent and Quatarra 49 to create the crisis.
While Zimbabwe may defy easy categorization, a similar case can be made for the 2007 presidential elections which ended with a “government of national unity” after several people had been killed and thousands displaced. With 47.87 percent of total vote cast, Morgan Tavangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) defeated President Robert Mugabe who garnered 43.24 percent of the votes in the first round of voting. The lacuna was that going by the Zimbabwean constitution he needed to secure 50 percent of total votes cast so the election went into second round which he eventually boycotted on grounds of violence and manipulation being perpetrated by Mugabe. There is a school of thought which reasons that if Morgan had collaborated with Simba Makoni who got 8.31 percent of the votes in the first round, there would have been no need for a run-off. Whether or not Mugabe would have yielded power is another issue altogether but there is no doubt that he would have been defeated at the first ballot if the opposition parties had gone into the election as a coalition.
Examples abound of where such opposition coalition has ensured change in the continent. On February 27, 2000, Senegalese went to the polls with the incumbent President Abdou Diouf of the Socialist Party who had been in power for twenty years seeking another term. His main challenger was the veteran Abdoulaye Wade of the Senegalese Democratic Party he had defeated four times before. At the end, Diouf secured 41.51 percent while Wade came second with 31 percent. Since no candidate met the 50 percent requirement, a run-off was scheduled for March 19 and the six other contenders who between them accounted for about 28 percent of the total votes cast decided to step down for Wade who then went on to win by 58.49 percent of the votes.
The value of opposition coalition indeed goes beyond the sum of the parts as it helps to galvanise a kind of momentum within the populace that change was possible. Issaka K. Souare puts this in perspective with the argument that opposition coalition serves as a form of psychological boost which in turn helps to dent the myth of incumbent invincibility as it stimulates high turnout at election periods. “Opposition coalition building can therefore restore the hope of voters in the process and persuade them to vote. Seeing such popular support for the opposition, the ill-intentioned ruling regime may then be discouraged from rigging.”
There is perhaps no better testimony to the efficacy of opposition coalition in incumbent election than Republic of Benin. It began in March 1991 when for the first time, a multi-party presidential election was held. The first round saw the incumbent Mathieu Kerekou receiving 27 percent of total votes cast with the main opposition leader gaining 36 percent of the votes. Albert Tevoedjre got 14 percent, Adrien Hougbedji, 6 percent and Bruno Amoussou, 5 percent. The eight other contenders shared the remaining votes. With no candidate receiving 50 percent of the votes cast, the second round on 24 March resulted in victory for Nicephonre Soglo. What tilted the scale in Soglo’s favour was the endorsement he received from other opposition leaders who joined him in a coalition against the incumbent.
Five years later in March 1996, Kerekou turned the table on Soglo. In the first round, he came second with 34 percent of the votes to Soglo’s 36 percent. In the second round, opposition candidates rallied around Kerekou against the man who defeated him five years previously but who by then was the incumbent. Kerekou secured the endorsement of Hougbedji who got 20 percent of the votes and Amoussou who secured 8 percent of the votes. With that, the reformed dictator was able to oust the incumbent Soglo with 52 percent of total votes cast.
By the next election, the power of opposition coalition was at play again. The March 5, 2006 presidential election in Benin was the first that Kerekou would not be on the ballot. His long-term rival, Soglo was also barred from contesting. The first round of voting produced an interesting result in which the two leading contenders between them accounted for just 60 percent of total votes cast. While Yayi Boni came first with 36 percent of the votes, Adrien Houngbeji came second with 24 percent. In the run-off, the six other contenders decided to withdraw for Boni who went on to win with almost 75 percent of total votes cast.
Ghana is perhaps the best model of competitive democracy in the continent. In the December 7, 2000 presidential election, opposition candidate, John Kufuor of the New Patriotic Party led with 48 percent of the total votes cast while candidate of the ruling National Democratic Change, John Attah-Mills scored 45 percent. Since no one had the minimum of 50 percent votes required for outright victory, the five other candidates rallied behind Kufuor who went on to win the second round by 57 percent.
The result of the 2008 contest was more divisive for both the country and the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) which presented Nana Akufo-Addo to replace President John Kuffuor. He went on to secure 49.13 percent which fell slightly short of the 50 percent he needed. Instructively, if this were Nigeria or Kenya where it is First-Past-The-Post, Akufo-Addo would have been declared the winner without the necessity of a run-off. But in Ghana (like Zimbabwe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Zambia etc.), it takes 50 percent of the total votes cast to cross the finishing line. In the run-off, Akufo-Ado’s main challenger, John Atta-mills of the National Democratic Congress who got 47.92 percent to force the contest into the second round won by a margin of 0.46 percent after the six other contenders rallied behind him.
In Sierra Leone, the 2005 presidential election is also a testimony to the power of opposition coalition. Before the election, the ruling party selected the sitting vice president Solomon Barewa as candidate to succeed outgoing President Teejan Kabbah. Party strongman, Charles Margai, who felt slighted, decided to establish a rival Peoples Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC) thus splitting the ruling party. In the first round of voting, Ernest Bai Koroma of the All Peoples Congress (APC) secured 44.34 percent while Barewa got 38.28 percent. Margai secured 14 percent of the votes that might have gone to Barewa had there been no split in the ruling party. In the run-off, he threw his weight behind Koroma who went on to win.
From the foregoing, one can easily deduce the power of opposition coalition in the defeat of a ruling party and this is also the story from Mali, another country where presidential elections have resulted in leadership alternations. In the 2002 presidential election, there were 24 aspirants with Amadou Toumani Touré coming first with 28 percent. Soumaïla Cissé, candidate of the ruling party came second with 23 percent of votes while Ibrahim Boubacar Keita scored 21 percent. Between them, the 21 other contenders garnered about 28 percent of the votes which became crucial in the second round when Toure won with 64 percent to defeat Cisse. Zambia in 1991 presents a similar scenario. Even though there were six political parties in the country, five of them rallied around Frederick Chiluba’s Movement for Multiparty Democracy to defeat founding President Kenneth Kaunda in what became a massive routing.
According to Souare, the blame for the absence of regime change in many countries within the continent should be put squarely at the doorstep of the opposition leaders most of whom themselves are ‘macro democrats’ and ‘micro autocrats’ who call for democracy at the national level yet do not practice the same within their parties. “The reason for this is that they form parties to seek power for themselves rather than to contribute to the democratic process in the country. If their leadership of the opposition coalition were not assured, they would rather go it alone even if they know that neither they nor another leader would win in a solo act.”
Nothing indeed exposes the opportunism of African opposition than the outcome of the December 2001 presidential election in Zambia which was marred by several irregularities with victory for the ruling party candidate, Levy Mwanawasa. Both local and foreign observers documented several electoral malpractices and three opposition candidates petitioned the Supreme Court which agreed that the polls were indeed flawed yet ruled that the result should stand. But whatever the shortcomings of the election, it was actually the opposition which snatched defeat from the jaws of an imminent victory by failing to unite behind the most serious contender, Anderson Mazoka who secured 26.76 percent of the votes as against 28.69 percent which gave Mwanawassa his victory and the presidency.
Before the election, there were several meetings between leading opposition figures but all the talks yielded no result as each decided to test his political strength. At the end, all that Mazoka needed was less than two percent more for the opposition to win the presidency yet Christon Tembo who rallied behind him to protest the result got 13 percent of the votes and Tilyenji Kaunda, another later-day supporter, also got 10 percent. Even each of the four other contenders garnered enough votes which could have made the difference. For instance, Godfrey Miyanda got 8 percent of the votes; Benjamin Mwila secured 5 percent, Michael Sata, 3 and Nevers Mumba, 2. Had any of these fringe candidates stepped down for Mazoka, the outcome could have been different yet all the opposition candidates united after the election.
Conclusion
At this point, I must state that I do not in any way want to convey the impression that opposition coalition guarantees victory as there are other factors which account for that. What I have tried to do is provide an explanation as to why it is difficult to dislodge an incumbent if the opposition is fractionalized. This finding is particularly useful for the Nigerian opposition politicians who never succeed in forging any serious electoral alliance against the ruling party until after they have been defeated.
There are of course issues that need further exploration, especially given the ease with which leading opposition figures in Africa most often find accommodation in the government they challenged at the polls. This then leads to salient questions: Who really do most of these opposition politicians work for? Could it be that they were planted by the incumbents to make sure that attempts at coalition don’t work and for which they are rewarded? Do these opposition politicians really stand for anything beyond the appetite for power which then compels them to gallivant from one political party to the another? To what extent can one really describe politicians who are members of the ruling party until perhaps a few weeks to the election as credible opposition? These and a few other questions will have to be critically examined but not here and certainly not today.
While there may be a few lapses in the conduct of the last presidential election in Nigeria, the outcome could not have been otherwise given the manner in which the opposition approached the contest. There are, however issues which the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) should look into for the sake of future elections. Respected constitutional lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Professor Itse Sagay, has for instance questioned results from the South East and South-South geopolitical zones of the country. Against the background that the consensus of the international community and that of most Nigerians is that Jonathan won, the pertinent question remains: how does such allegation help the opposition?
When the result of the November 28, 2010 presidential election in Cote D’Ivoire was released, Gbagbo disputed figures from Denguele, Savanes and Worodougou in the Northern region of the country where the cumulative turn-out of voters averaged above 90 percent. Given that votes from these three areas, stronghold of Quattarra, accounted for 26 percent of the total votes cast in the country, Gbagbo had genuine complaints but if anybody listened to him, he would still be in power today. The lesson is that the fixation of the Nigerian opposition with voters’ turn out in the South-east and South-south may not carry much weight. In any case, no presidential election result has ever been upturned by court anywhere in the world.
While not advocating against the legal option already taken by a section of the Nigerian opposition, my contention is that it is more productive for them to begin to plan and organize for future elections. The perennial narrative that they are rigged out by the ruling party is becoming hollow. In a milieu where political parties are not only weak but lack financial wherewithal while there is no ideology binding members together, forging an electoral alliance is a long and arduous task. Waiting till weeks or days to the election to begin the process for such an alliance is therefore no more than an open invitation to a sure defeat.
*Adeniyi, Fellow of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, is author of a forthcoming book on the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua presidency
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