While there is no indisputably powerful black nation on the global stage today, there is a country striving to become one. Nigeria has the economic potential to become a major world player, and is also projected to become the third-largest nation before 2050, by which point Africans will represent a quarter of humanity. Here in Britain, the reality of this demographic transformation has not quite registered yet. Discussions about the next century of geopolitics focus on regions with dwindling birth rates — Europe, North America and China — even though our future will increasingly be African.
As the most populous black state, Nigeria’s prospects are crucial to the future of global race dynamics, a reality often forgotten in the exasperatingly parochial race debate here in the Anglosphere. Black people worldwide yearn for a black nation that can compete with Western powers — a yearning embodied by the make-believe state of Wakanda in the enormously popular Black Panther movies. So, as Nigerians head to the polls tomorrow to choose their president in a highly unpredictable election, it is worth remembering that the result will have implications far beyond West Africa.
Contrary to expectations at the beginning of the campaign, the poll is now a three-way contest between two establishment figures and a popular third contender promising to upturn the status quo. Eight months ago, the odds-on favourite was the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu. A 70-year-old long-time politician, Tinubu is widely considered to be one of Nigeria’s chief “godfathers” — very wealthy political actors who engage in industrial-scale vote-buying, paying poor citizens cash to support their candidates. Tinubu openly brags about how many politicians owe him their positions, including current president Muhammadu Buhari.
His critics cite his corruption, increasingly visible ill-health, and numerous campaign gaffes as reasons he is unfit for the job. Tinubu once suggested the Nigerian army should recruit “50 million youths” to tackle the country’s staggering 33% unemployment rate (arguing that the policy would not be costly because they could be fed on locally-grown corn). In one attempt to laud the achievements of a governor from his party, he described him as having “turned a rotten situation to a bad one”. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, Tinubu did not agree to live one-on-one media interviews during the campaign and refused to attend presidential debates. At an event at Chatham House, here in the UK, he instructed colleagues to answer audience questions directed at him. His hands have been observed shaking in public and speculation is rife he may be suffering from Parkinson’s, a suggestion his campaign team stoutly refutes. They insist the gaffes are mere slips of the tongue, and tout his record of overseeing significant growth of Lagos’s economy during his 1999-2007 stint as governor, as proof that he is the can-do leader the nation needs.
The other establishment candidate is Atiku Abubakar, a 76-year-old former vice-president running on the platform of the opposition, the People’s Democratic Party. Atiku is likewise wealthy, considered corrupt, and part of the old guard in Nigerian politics. He is even more economically liberal than Tinubu and vows to privatise many state-held assets if elected. “In every great nation in this world, you find out that it is the private sector that is driving the economy, they provide the jobs, they provide the prosperity, and they do everything,” he stated in a 2022 interview. He admires Margaret Thatcher.
Though there are often a dozen or more candidates, Nigerian presidential elections are virtually always a de facto two-horse race between establishment candidates. Nigerian voters are therefore usually faced with weighing up the “lesser evil”. Many Nigerians are dissatisfied with this status quo, but don’t see it changing. But during this latest campaign, sometime in the second half of last year, a third contender started setting Nigerian social media alight, provoking excitement among voters seeking a new order.
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