Nigeria Gets Ready For Polls Amid Sectarian Violence, Economic Woes

With Nigerian President Ahmed Buhari due to call it a day next year, the race is on to step into his shoes in the largest African nation, facing a severe economic crisis and gruesome sectarian violence.

Nigeria's two leading parties have zeroed in on their candidates which will see 75-year-old Atiku Abubakar, a former two-term vice president, as the flag-bearer of the opposition People's Democratic Party (PDP) and 70-year-old Bola Tinubu -often called by his critics and allies as the godfather of Lagos for his vast influence across the country -- taking on Abubakar, who once faced a visa ban in the U.S. for his alleged links to corruption scandals.

Power in the country of 200 million is rotated between the north and the south, dominated by Muslims and Christians, respectively. The presidential polls as well as National Assembly, governorship, and State Assembly elections are billed for next year with voters electing a head of state for a four-year term in February.

Ahead of the polls, insecurity and violence in oil-rich Nigeria have increased, which will impact the upcoming elections.

At least 50 people were killed and scores of others were injured in an attack on a Catholic Church in Owo in southwest Nigeria on 5 June.

The attack is reported to be attributed to armed Fulani herdsmen, a tribe accused of spearheading insecurity across the country. Nigeria faces growing tension between farmers, who are mainly Christian, and pastoralists, who are mainly Fulani Muslim.

There are as many as 13 million Fulani people in Nigeria, constituting 6 percent of the country's population. The pastoralists are mainly concentrated in the north, who have been pushed to the Christian-dominated south, due to the degradation of grazing lands.

The 5 June attack is reported to be a reprisal against the move by the provincial state to chase away Fulani pastoralists from grazing in the area.

President Buhari flayed the church attack, calling it a "heinous killing of worshipers".

Like a fly in the ointment, the 12-year-long Boko Haram insurgency is active in the northeast. A splinter Jihadist group, the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), has already made its presence felt in the region.

The Christian-Muslim conflict in the northeast alone has claimed more than 40,000 lives and displaced two million people so far.

Besides, criminal gangs and bandits, affiliated with terrorist groups, are carrying out mass kidnappings in the northwest and north-central parts of the country.

On top of this, separatists, who are seeking to succeed from the rest of Nigeria, are thriving in the southeast with a spate of killings and attacks.

A joint report by the World Food Program and Food and Agriculture Organization placed Nigeria among six nations facing catastrophic food shortages on 6 June.

A major crude oil exporter, Nigeria is unable to tap its vast potential to reap rich dividends from the current surge in oil prices with violence standing as a stumbling block to increasing production.

Since the country doesn't refine its own oil, it is importing at high prices, further straining the country's battered economy and currently faces a fuel shortage.

Africa's second-biggest economy is plagued by a high unemployment rate which was a single digit of 8.2 percent in 2015. It astronomically rose by 33 percent in the fourth quarter of 2020. Though figures for 2021 are yet to be released, a presidential committee pegged the jobless rate at 40 percent last year.

Though the country's economy recorded a growth rate of 3.4 percent in 2021, experts said that it was jobless growth as it failed to reflect on the major job-creating sectors. The vital sectors like agriculture, manufacturing, and construction saw their growth rates falling to 2.13 percent, 3.35 percent and 3 percent respectively last year.

The job crisis has resulted in armed robbery, banditry and kidnapping, which make it difficult for the nation to attract investment to create jobs.

According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, about 1,200 people were kidnapped in the first half of 2021 alone in the country, compared with 45 in 2010.

President Buhari, who quits office in May 2023 after serving his two terms, has stressed on unity to fight violence and terrorism in the country that has been battling criminal and religious violence.

Once forced into exile by military ruler Sani Abacha, ruling party presidential nominee Tinubu is banking on his huge influence across the country to win the election. Tinubu has been instrumental in installing Buhari to the current post and played a vital role in nominating the current Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo.

The immediate challenge before Tinubu, a former Mobil oil executive, is the tricky task of choosing his running mate by navigating the country's complicated religious and ethnic permutations.

As a southern Muslim, Tinubu, a trained accountant, will fall for a Christian politician from the north or he may not possibly find favor with southern Christian voters.

Abubakar, a Muslim from the north, is widely expected to select a Christian as vice-mate from the south.

The prime task of the new leader of the west African nation will be to unify the country, divided across religious lines and banditry.