Anastasia Okechukwu Reporting
London-based publication, Financial Times, has described the recently concluded 2023 Presidential and National Assembly elections as “badly flawed.”
The publication in it’s editorial published yesterday, knocked the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC, over the conduct of the elections while it also advised the courts to take a hard look at the emergence of the president-elect, Bola Tinubu, if the victory is challenged by his opponents.
Financial Times further added that Tinubu’s tally of 8.8 million in a country of 220 million people gave him the weakest of mandates.
It warned that the former Lagos State governor would be faced with one of the most difficult jobs in the world as Nigeria has been teetering on the edge of catastrophe with a breakdown of security and an almost total absence of growth.
INEC had in the early hours of Wednesday, declared Tinubu, as the winner of the election and had proceeded with the issuance of certificate of return to him and his running mate, Kashim Shettima on Wednesday afternoon.
Chairman of INEC, Prof. Mahmud Yakubu, who declared the results noted that Tinubu polled a total of 8,794,726 million votes to defeat his closest challengers, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party Peter Obi of the Labour Party and Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party who polled 6,984,520 million; 6,101,533 million and 1,496,687 million votes, respectively.
However, The Financial Times argued that all that Nigeria needed was a clean election to reiterate the basic message of democracy where a sovereign people could choose its leaders, saying “sadly, it did not happen.”
It maintained that the, “election which appears to have delivered the presidency to Bola Tinubu, a wealthy political fixer running for the incumbent All Progressives Congress — was badly mismanaged at best.”
The publication added that the presidential election failed to set the example needed for West Africa, where too many national leaders have extended term limits or resorted to seizing power at gunpoint noting that, “Nigeria remains a democracy, but only just that.”