Ahead of the weekend’s presidential election almost all Nigerians — about 90% – felt that the West African country, home to more than 200-million people and some of SA’s biggest companies, had lost its way.
A cursory glance at the fiscal and economic data tells you the main reason for this gloom-ridden sentiment: about four in 10 people live below the poverty line. That is about 90-million people, enough to stoke widespread discontent in Africa’s biggest oil producer.
Indeed, in 2020 a critical mass of citizens took to the streets of Lagos and other cities to express their anger over police brutality, before the demonstrations morphed into a wider movement against everything from corruption to entrenched hardship.
Africa’s biggest economy has hardly grown over the past few years, hovering around recession levels compared with about 7% annual growth in the previous decade. The economy is still heavily reliant on crude oil, although vast sums of revenue have been siphoned off through corruption. Little has been done to diversify the economy, fix roads pitted with potholes or build new infrastructure.
Nigeria’s fiscal health is dangerously weak too. It is groaning under huge public sector debt, which eats up more than 60% of the country’s revenues and limits the scope to spend on health, education and social protection measures. The case for ending a $10bn-a-year fuel subsidy, which benefits richer Nigerians relatively more than poorer people, is compelling.
In past elections the outcome of the vote would have meant the victorious candidate has come up tops in the competition for patronage and dwindling oil revenues. Prominent businessman and former Lagos state governor Bola Tinubu, who campaigned on the slogan “Renew Hope” for Nigeria, and his ruling All Progressives Congress party, now have a chance to set Nigeria on a new path.
Tinubu has been handed a mandate to make good on his promises to tackle corruption and security issues and reverse the economic underperformance of the past, which has been punctuated by unorthodox foreign exchange policies and mounting fiscal sustainability concerns.
A prosperous Nigeria is not only good for Nigerians, but would alleviate some of the headaches experienced by bosses and shareholders of SA companies such as MultiChoice and MTN, which have borne the brunt of the disastrous stewardship of the economy in the recent past. Both companies have had to fend off multibillion-rand fines that have had more to do with the Nigerian government’s attempt to plug holes in its budget than the claimed bid to make these companies pay for cutting corners.
But Tinubu’s victory has been marred by allegations of irregularities, and operational failures in the lead-up to, and during, the election, prompting his main rival, Atiku Abubakar, to reject the outcome as a sham. There were delays in several parts of the country due to technical problems with a new biometric antifraud voter accreditation system and the late arrival of vehicles to transport the machines, shining an unforgiving spotlight on the Independent National Electoral Commission.
It is a cautionary tale of election mismanagement for SA as we head into the 2024 national elections, which are widely expected to see the ANC lose its majority. We have to make sure the Electoral Commission of SA is shipshape, or we run the risk of eroding trust in an election outcome that is expected to usher SA into the new, uncharted waters of coalition politics at national level.
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