The
escalation of Boko Haram’s bloody insurgency in northeastern Nigeria,
including its assault Sunday on the strategic city of Maiduguri, has
raised serious concerns about the ability of a significant portion of
the Nigerian electorate to participate in the country’s upcoming
presidential elections. The potential disenfranchisement of up to 1.5
million people displaced as a result of the violence by the militant
Islamist organization could undermine the credibility of the already
divisive election and raises the likelihood of sectarian violence in the
aftermath of the hotly contested political battle.
The Boko Haram insurgency will have an effect on voting in
the three northeastern Nigerian states in which it is most active,
experts said. Amid questions about the logistics of setting up polling
stations in the midst of instability in Adamawa, Yobe and Borno, there
also is the matter of Nigerian electoral law, which requires voters to
cast ballots in their home constituencies. Such a provision will make it
nearly impossible for the more than 1 million refugees and internally
displaced citizens to vote in the Feb. 14 election.
This will be Boko Haram’s biggest impact on the election,
said Alex Thurston, who teaches in the African Studies program at
Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. “They’ve made a serious,
credible election untenable in Borno state and will make it difficult to
hold an election in the other two states,” he said. “There are really
high estimates of people displaced and there haven’t been adequate
provisions made to make sure these people can vote.”
A failure to enfranchise this subset of the Nigerian
electorate would be bad enough on its own, but the possibility that it
could undermine the electoral process as a whole is also a major
concern, said Jennifer Cooke, the director of the Africa program at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. “Even
in a best faith effort, it's going to be very difficult to ensure the
vote of all Nigerians in Borno and the northeast,” she said. “The
question is what level of enfranchisement and access is going to be
acceptable to both parties. There has to be some agreement on that
before elections because if there isn't some standard of agreement ...
it could call into question the legitimacy and constitutionality of the
election as a whole.”
Incumbent leader Goodluck Jonathan is facing former ruler
and opposition candidate Muhammadu Buhari in the February election,
which has already proved divisive and polarizing. Jonathan’s main base
of support comes from the southern, oil-producing Niger Delta region,
while Buhari is mainly favored in the southwest and the north, the
predominantly Muslim region that has a record of voting for the
opposition. The three states in which Boko Haram is strongest -- Borno,
Adamawa and Yobe -- are thought to have majority Muslim populations,
though Nigeria's official census does not record religious affiliation.
While the disenfranchisement of a significant portion of
the electorate in the opposition stronghold of the north may on the
surface appear to favor Jonathan, the reality of Nigeria’s formula for
calculating electoral victory means that neither candidate would benefit
from the situation. “It’s unfair to say that either side benefits by
not having people vote,” said J. Peter Pham, the director of the Africa
Center at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank. “It’s a
double-edged sword. Voter suppression in the north would tend to
suppress votes that would likely go to the opposition but it would also
suppress those that may have gone to the incumbent that they would need
to meet the vote threshold required by the Nigerian constitution.”
Not only does a successful presidential candidate need to
win 50 percent plus one vote of the total cast, but Nigeria’s
constitution also stipulates that candidates are required to garner 25
percent of the vote in two-thirds of the states. Based on past
elections, it is doubtful that Jonathan will be able to carry northern
states. However, his potential victory could still depend on garnering
votes among reliable pockets of support in the north, where the ability
to vote could very well be impacted by Boko Haram.
Despite this reality, a narrow electoral margin could turn
the spotlight on the north’s disenfranchised voters, who could become
the focus of postelection rhetoric by the loser of the presidential
race. “Even if the [winner] is elected cleanly, legally and otherwise, a
sore, irresponsible loser has plenty of scope to blow smoke because of
the situation created by Boko Haram violence,” said Pham, who warned of
the possibility of an “asterisk mark” next to the winner’s legitimacy.
The possibility that the election results could be
undermined does not bode well for Nigeria, a country that has seen
significant postelection violence in its previous presidential votes
since the end of military rule. Following Jonathan’s victory in the 2011
contest, rioting broke out in the north and at least 800 people
reportedly were killed in the violence. The loaded rhetoric around the
current presidential race could mean that the aftermath of this election
will not be much better. “The appeal to ethnic and religious identities
going on right and left in Nigeria ... can set the stage for quite a
bloody ethnic and religious conflict in the aftermath of the elections,”
said former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, John Campbell, the Ralph Bunche
senior fellow for Africa policy studies at the Council on Foreign
Relations in New York.
According to Campbell, the breakdown of the system of power
alternation, the informal Nigerian political agreement that held that
the presidency would alternate between the predominantly Muslim north
and the predominantly Christian south, has encouraged a new focus on
using ethnic and religious differences to rally support. Jonathan’s
decision to run in 2011 was a departure from the informal system and
contributed to the rise of northern animosity toward the Jonathan
government.
“Boko Haram and the insurgency in the north has deepened
some of the polarization in the rhetoric on religious lines,” said
Cooke, who pointed out that though elections tend to bring out these
sorts of issues, this time around the rhetoric in Nigeria has been
slightly elevated. The concern in the immediate term is that a
protracted political battle fought out in Abuja in the aftermath of the
elections could distract attention away from the northeast, “with the
possibility of Boko Haram taking advantage to expand its attacks or take
additional territory,” according to Cooke.
It will be up to the loser of the election to not
“irresponsibly stoke the flames for political gain,” said Pham. “Just
like last time, the real danger of that is it could produce violence ...
and Boko Haram can step in and capitalize on a situation they helped
bring about,” he said. “Boko Haram will be the only winner if that
happens.”
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