The InterDependent

LAGOS, Nigeria -- Four years after holding disastrous elections in 2007, Nigeria's recent presidential election showed the winner to be the incumbent, Goodluck Jonathan, according to the Independent National Electoral Commission. Jonathan's election on April 9 marks the first time that a candidate from the southern oil-producing Niger Delta has won the country's top political post. Jonathan inherited the presidency through a court ruling after the death of former President Umaru Yar'adua, when Jonathan was vice president in 2010.

While the news was greeted with jubilation in his home region, young supporters of the former military ruler (and runner-up in the election) Muhammadu Buhari in the mostly Muslim north reacted violently, setting up roadblocks and torching cars and houses of local People's Democratic Party partisans, protesting what they considered rigged polls. Reuters news agency reported that "many" have died since riots broke out on Sunday and that the residence of Vice President Namadi Sambo, Jonathan's running mate, was burned and ransacked in the northern town of Zaria. African Union and European Union observers have verified the elections as free and fair, a first in the country's troubled electoral history since its transition to democracy from military rule in 1999.

Most Nigerians remained cautiously optimistic over what they perceive to be credible elections.

"As far as we are concerned, Goodluck Jonathan has made some headway in generation of electricity and supply of fuel," said Alagoa Morris, an evironmental activist in Yenagoa in the Niger Delta. "It is still too short a time to say this is where we should praise Jonathan. But being someone who has a listening ear, a former university teacher, we believe that he will keep his gentleman’s promise with Nigeria."

Parliamentary elections took place on April 9, after a week's delay, amid sporadic violence as well, though that election has also been deemed fair by official observers, with open conditions throughout the country. The presidential election had been delayed a week, too. A nationwide governor poll is slated for April 26.

Africa’s most expensive elections in its most populous country (155 million people, with a median age of 19 years old) were postponed after the electoral commission chairman, Attahiru Jega, announced that voting materials had not arrived in several states. Past elections in Nigeria have been marked by violence and rigging, so authorities were keen to avoid similar mistakes. The appointment of Jega, a university professor, as chairman of the electoral commission last year was viewed as a major step forward.

Joe Penney

Goodluck Jonathan, the incumbent who won the presidential election in Nigeria, voted in his hometown, Utuoke, in the Niger Delta on April 9.

Nigeria has been taking a high-profile stance in West African politics lately. Acting in its regional role as chairman of the Economic Community of West African States, Nigeria urged the United Nations to pass a tougher resolution on the crisis in Côte d’Ivoire, where Laurent Gbagbo refused to cede presidential office to Alassane Ouattara after losing the election in November.

Jonathan encouraged the Security Council to strengthen the mandate of the UN peacekeeping mission in Côte d' Ivoire and to adopt more stringent international sanctions against the Gbagbo camp in the name of protecting civilians. On March 30, the Security Council passed such a resolution, sponsored by Nigeria and France, authorizing military destruction of Gbagbo's heavy weapons. Gbagbo was taken prisoner by the Ivoirian president's forces on April 11 after days of aerial bombardment by the UN and France.

At the UN itself, Nigeria plays a large role in peacekeeping efforts, being the fourth-largest contributor of uniformed personnel to that department [see a previous ID article: http://www.theinterdependent.com/100913/nigeria-wins-key-posts-in-un-peacekeeping-work].

The country has long struggled to resolve turbulence in its oil-rich Niger Delta region, where the UN Development Program has joined government efforts to run a program to rehabilitate insurgents, who have been fomenting violence over oil revenue. Nigeria earns about $25 billion a year from oil and gas sales, but ranks 142nd out of 169 countries in the UN’s most recent Human Development Index, which measures quality of life.

[This article was updated on April 11 and 19.]