Pretoria - The question is not whether Saturday’s Nigerian election will be violent, but how violent, experts told a seminar in Pretoria on Tuesday.
They warned that the violent Islamist group Boko Haram had vowed to disrupt the elections and that inevitable claims of election fraud by losing candidates and parties would also provoke violence.
President Goodluck Jonathan of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) which has been in power since Nigeria’s return to democracy in 1999, is seeking re-election.
He is running neck and neck with former military leader Muhammadu Buhari, candidate of the newly-formed All People’s Congress (APC), the strongest opposition challenge so far.
Analyst Richard Cornwell of the British Peace Support Team said at the seminar held by the Institute of African Renaissance Studies at Unisa that the outcomes of the elections were impossible to predict.
But the “race may be tipped in Jonathan’s favour by recent successes against Boko Haram.
“Then there is the traditional 40:30:20:10 voting formula,” he said.
What is the 40:30:20:10 formula? Hard-nosed analysts of Nigeria’s political scene maintain that 40 percent of voters exchange their votes for cash; 30 percent vote on ethnic or religious lines; 20 percent based theirs on allegiance to parties or political godfathers, and only 10 percent on the basis of the candidates’ personal or political appeal.
“Also, whatever the results there will be claims of wholesale fraud, and violence,” Cornwell said.
Nigerian commentator Adetunji Omotola agreed that “there is always violence in Nigerian elections,” because he said Nigerians got excited when “little bags of money” were dangled before them.
This
would be Buhari’s fourth elections, he said, and after losing the last three, he might feel cheated if he lost again, “but I don’t think he will incite people”.
The peace pact between Jonathan and Buhari was so far holding, except for first lady Patience Jonathan who had said those who voted for the opposition should be stoned
.
Independent Foreign Service