Overview
Nigeria’s presidential election is now just over two months away, assuming no adjustment of the dates that have been published by the Independent National Election Commission (INEC). So, what might we expect as the campaigns build to a crescendo before the finish line of election day?
On the plus side, 2023 will be the seventh iteration of elections, following the return of the country to civil rule in 1999. The democratic process hopefully gains maturity as lessons are learned from each event. Unfortunately, this maturity is belittled by the levels of sophistication with which interested parties seek to influence the outcomes.
Security Challenges
Nigeria’s myriad security challenges have both grown in volume and in geographic spread over the past 8 years of President Buhari’s tenure, despite his repeated mantra that he will tackle these challenges directly and defeat the miscreants causing them. So, the upcoming elections will occur against a rich canvas of threats. These include a country-wide kidnap risk, armed banditry in the North West and West Central belt, armed insurgency, domiciled in the North East but periodically occurring more widely in the North West and Central belts, ethnoreligious armed clashes in the Central belt, secession-motivated armed insurgency in the South East (IPOB), piratic occurrences in the Delta region, cult (gang) turf wars in major conurbations (Lagos, Ibadan, Pot Harcourt) and high levels of violent crime throughout all areas of large population density.
Organisations and companies must, and do, operate in these conditions by ensuring they apply appropriate security mitigations. Organisations know that the elections add an extra level of complexity to the security panorama and should be making additional arrangements to be prepared as part of their Business Continuity planning. So, will this round of elections be any different from those that have gone before?
The drivers of dissatisfaction, anger, dissent, and disaffection among the population include poverty, unemployment, and high inflation. These indicators have all grown markedly since Covid and, more recently, the onset of the Ukraine-Russia conflict. 63% of the population is now deemed to be in poverty (up from around 40% in 2019) according to Nigeria’s National Bureau for Statistics, inflation is running at over 20% (up from 11.4% in 2019), according to the Central Bank of Nigeria and unemployment is assessed at 33.3% compared to a 2019 figure of 23.5%.
Although the implication of this data is alarming enough, it is also important to understand the culture that drives Nigerian politics. Nigerian society has traditionally favored nepotism and patronage as a means of doing business. Hence, the prosperity of individuals and businesses over the coming four and potentially eight years depends, critically, on who one knows in the winning party’s hierarchy. A failure to back the winning party threatens a loss of business, potential unemployment, and the risk of joining the ranks of the impoverished.
Taken in this light, ensuring sufficient votes for the selected candidates can become a very deadly game indeed. In the current campaign, we have already seen opposition thuggery at campaigning events, armed ambushes of candidate convoys kidnap of party representatives, and the burning of INEC premises. All the indicators point towards increasing security challenges, popular dissent, and potential instability, all seeking to disrupt the transparency and fairness of the democratic process. If the security agencies lose control, even if only in parts of the country, the election process is threatened, possibly leading to postponement or worse.
How can Spearfish Support you
With all these security challenges in mind, Spearfish has a number of solutions to help you and your team stay safe, from Journey Management and tailored risk alerts to in-depth Security Risk Assessments. If you would like to know more about our products contact our team today.
Comments
Leave a Comment