The last of the three-phase general elections, held 26 and 28 April, dominated newspaper headlines in Nigeria this past week. Beginning with the National Assembly (parliamentary) polls on 9 April and the presidential election 16 April, the general elections were rounded off with the governorship and State Assembly (regional) polls on 26 April with elections in only two States – Kaduna and Bauchi – shifted to 28 April following a postponement occasioned by security concerns. Despite losing some states to the opposition, the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) won most of the 24 states in which the governorship election was held on Tuesday, maintaining its strong hold at that level of governance. The states are among the several northern states that witnessed massive post-election violence last week, leaving hundreds dead and thousands displaced.
Gubernatorial elections were not held in 10 states because the tenure of the governors in the states is yet to expire.
According to the results declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the PDP won in 16 states, followed by the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) with three each and the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) one.
The following headlines captured the story across Nigeria after the elections.
The Vanguard said ‘Akala loses to Ajimobi in Oyo’, ‘Daniel, Olurin and Isiaka congratulate Amosun in Ogun’, ‘Protests at Ekpan, Sapele as Uduaghan is re-elected in Delta’, ‘ACN sweeps Osun State Assembly election’, Fashola wins landslide in Lagos, ••• Dedicates victory to slain corps members’, ‘Governor Chime wins in Enugu State’, ‘PDP wins in Kwara, DPP alleges vote buying’, ‘Kwara guber: How Gov. Saraki dusted father, sister’, ‘Orji re-elected in Abia’, ‘CPC routed from the North’, and ‘Akpabio returns as Akwa Ibom governor’.
The Trust headlines were ‘THE GIANT KILLERS: Al-Makura, Yari, Ajimobi’, ‘THE LANDSLIDERS: Dankwambo, Shema, Fashola, Chime, Orji, Amaechi’, ‘THE BIG WINNERS: Kwankwaso, Shettima, Ahmed, Amosun, Ngige’, and ‘THE COMFORTABLE WINNERS: Lamido, Dakingari, Suswam, Aliyu, Gaidam, Elechi, Akpabio’.
According to the Guardian, ‘INEC To Hold Supplementary Guber Election In Imo’, ‘Five Guber Candidates Want Enugu Election Cancelled’, and ‘Protests Trail Delta Assembly Election Results’.
Writing under the headline ‘Mixed fortunes for governors’, the Punch reported that it was a tale of shocking upsets as results of Tuesday’s governorship election trickled in, with some incumbents tumbling out of power.
Two surprising upsets were the governors of Oyo and Nasarawa states — Adebayo Alao-Akala and Aliyu Akwe-Doma — respectively. Against some permutations, both first-term governors, incidentally of the ruling PDP, were defeated in fierce contests. However, a number of other first term governors got re-elected.
Although election observers had ruled the Nigerian polls free and fair, the papers reported a series of violence during the election, especially after President Goodluck Jonathan was returned elected.
There were killings across seven States in the northern part of the country and the victims included some members of the mandatory one-year National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) who were hired as ad-hoc staff of INEC for the elections.
The Sun, headlining its story ‘Punish masterminds of unprovoked killings – Soyinka urges Jonathan’, reported that Nobel Laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka, has called on President Jonathan to urgently address critical issues bordering on the Nigerian state, so as not to jeopardize the continuity of the federation. He said multifarious problems buffeting the nation must be addressed comprehensively, without which, an ominous fear and uncertainty would continue to loom over the nation.
Soyinka expressed his worries on Thursday while speaking from the rooftop of a private residence in Victoria Island, Lagos. According to him, the culture of impunity in the country must be expunged to save the nation from doom.
He said repeated calls for a Sovereign National Conference (SNC) that would address issues affecting the country, were summarily rebuffed by cynics as attempts to break up the country, a situation that had plunged the nation into a web of crisis.
‘Post-election riots planned ahead of time – Soyinka’, wrote the Punch newspaper on Friday. It said that Soyinka, on Thursday decried the post-election violence in some Northern states, saying it was “planned well ahead of time”.
He described the killings that followed the riots as an ‘unbelievable waste of lives,’ and pointed out that they (killings) had further brought to the front burner, the concept of Nigeria.
The playwright spoke just as the 2 Division of the Nigerian Army said it had arrested more than 108 people in Oyo, Osun, Ogun, Delta, Edo and Kwara states during Tuesday’s governorship and state assembly elections.
Election observers on the platform of Project 2011 Swiftcount had also on Thursday reported an upsurge of critical election-related incidents, including ballot snatching and violence during Tuesday’s polls.
The Nation headline on the story was ‘Killings in the North planned, says Soyinka’ and the Guardian reported ‘Soyinka decries post-presidential polls violence’.
On the post-election violence, the candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), retired General Muhammadu Buhari, whose supporters were alleged to have carried out the killings, has dared president Jonathan to come after him.
The Sun headline on the story was ‘Arrest me if you can, Buhari dares Jonathan’. The paper said Buhari spoke against the backdrop of the call by the President of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, that the CPC candidate be arrested over the recent post-election violence in some Northern states.
Oritsejafor, while addressing newsmen at the Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos, called for the immediate arrest and prosecution of General Buhari and all identified cohorts before they plunge the nation into another civil war.
Buhari, speaking through his spokesman, Yinka Odumakin, said Oritsejafor’s call for his arrest was reckless and bound to heat up the polity.
Odumakin said: “General Buhari is in Daura. So, let Jonathan go and arrest him.’
But in a response to Buhari’s statement, the leader of the Niger Delta Volunteer Force, Alhaji Mujadhadi Asari Dokubo, said nothing would happen should Buhari be arrested.
Speaking with Saturday Sun, in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Dokubo said that the violence in the North could have been caused by what Buhari said when he voted on 16 April.
Meanwhile, Thisday newspaper, reporting under the headline ‘Slain Corps Members to Get National Burial’, said the NYSC had confirmed that the nine serving corps members, all young men, who were killed by rioters in Bauchi State following the 16 April presidential election, would be given a national burial.
The deceased are to be given national burials after the organisation had liaised with their parents. President Goodluck Jonathan is expected to be represented by governors of the states where the slain corps members hailed from.
And the Guardian, with the headline ‘U.S. Asks Jonathan To Heal Electoral Wounds’, reported that following the violent protests that trailed Nigeria’s presidential polls in some parts of the North, the US had urged President Jonathan to constitute a federal cabinet that would bridge perceived political divisions in the country.
Speaking with reporters on Thursday in Washington DC, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Ambassador Johnnie Carson, said: “I hope that he will act in both a responsible and inclusive manner in the selection of those individuals for his cabinet and that in doing so, he will be reaching out to heal the political divisions that were uncovered during the election process.”