Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari signed the Electoral Bill on February 25th, 2022, paving the way for the federal and state elections, which will take place on February 25th and March 11th, 2023. Since then, we've seen a number of contenders declare their intention to run for President.
Political parties have also been mandated to elect their presidential candidates by June 3rd of this year.
Today I have a visualization for you that highlights the outcomes of the previous three Nigerian presidential elections.
The Nigerian political sphere is mostly dominated by two huge parties, the APC (All Progressives Congress) and the PDP (Peoples Democratic Party), and it is nearly guaranteed that Nigeria's next president would come from one of these parties, despite the country's existing multi-party system.
This visualization shows that the All Progressives Congress (APC) has the majority of its allies in the northern states, while the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has the majority of its allies in the southern states.
With the upcoming elections and shifting voter attitudes, we can only speculate on which states may shift from red to green and vice versa.
Another obvious concern raised by this #viz is the disparity between voter registration and total votes cast.
We can observe that for each election year, just a portion (less than 50%) of registered voters actually voted.
Part of the reason for this is that a sizable portion of the voting populace feels that their ballots will not be counted, and the entire election process lacks integrity and transparency.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has come under fire from the public, as each election year brings issues such as riots, stolen ballot boxes, faulty card readers, inconclusive results (which can lead to disqualification) from certain LGAs, and so on, further eroding public trust in the electoral process. However, we can observe from the #viz, that the number of invalid votes has been maintained to a minimum in recent years (less than 4 percent of total votes cast)
Because of the country's major economic, political, and security difficulties, the stakes in the next elections are high. Nigerians are in severe need of redemption as some indicators such as inflation, debt, unemployment, and cost of living continue to grow.
