Two familiar veteran candidates are failing to strike a chord with the voters ahead of a critical presidential race next February
As political leaders loudly debate the ethics of signing up to a code of conduct and President Muhammadu Buhari throws back, for the fourth time, an electoral reform...
Both parties are to blame for the rigging and killings that could weaken President Buhari's national standing
No one emerges with credit from the violent fiasco of the elections that were re-run in Rivers State on 10 December. Nationally, the polls were a test of...
The received wisdom on Nigeria's elections is that they are all about money and mobilisation. Despite sheaves of glossy manifestos rolling off the presses, acres of newsprint devoted...
Vol 53 No 20 |
- SIERRA LEONE
A major electoral controversy came to an end in mid-September when President Ernest Bai Koroma reversed the decision of the National Electoral Commission Chairwoman, Christiana Thorpe, to raise...
From the surrealism of ‘missing president’ Umaru Yar’Adua, linked to the outside world via a ghostly voiced interview with the BBC, and with attendant disputes of legitimacy and sovereignty, Nigeria has solved the crisis in its own way, by effecting what some call a ‘democratic coup’. One by one, the elected institutions of state (the powerful governors’ forum and both houses of the National Assembly) and several non-elected regional councils met and agreed to support the handover to Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan.
Whatever the constitutional doubts that remain, the 9 February resolution by the National Assembly, citing the ‘doctrine of necessity’, to recognise Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan as Acting President was...