With key states yet to declare their results in Nigeria’s presidential election, the African nation’s voters appear to have turned their backs on the regime of incumbent Goodluck Jonathan and instead opted for change. That vote for change is actually a vote to return to the past, embracing opposition leader Muhammadu Buhari, who holds a lead of more than two million votes with Jonathan’s strongholds yet to report.
Buhari has held power before and garnered a tough reputation against those who lined their pockets through corruption and bribery in Africa’s most populous nation and biggest economy.
Buhari is making his fourth run at the presidency. His seeming success this time around comes after five years of frustration over endemic corruption, where the nation’s central bank has been treated like an automated teller machine by political cronies. Corruption aside, the biggest single issue facing voters is that of personal security and how the government in Abuja has reacted to the threat posed by Boko Haram. The reality is that the government has utterly failed to effectively end the threat and has done little to fight the militants as they took control of swathes of northern Nigeria.
The military has lacked leadership and a clear direction in dealing with Boko Haram and its reign of terror, bombings, killings and kidnappings. When more than 200 schoolgirls were kidnapped from a central Nigerian school almost a year ago, Jonathan’s government squandered an opportunity to take on the group once and for all and end its decade-long campaign. Western nations offered special forces and military advisers, along with hardware to track down and defeat Boko Haram. The response from Jonathan’s government was weak and indecisive. Most of those schoolgirls are still missing.
The reality is that the tide in recent weeks has been turned against Boko Haram — not by Nigerian troops who are unwilling to fight fellow Nigerians, but by a concerted campaign against the group by forces from Chad and Cameroon. Jonathan has talked the talk in defeating Boko Haram, but he has not walked the walk. And Nigerians could see how lame his efforts were.
