World leaders including the United States President, Joe Biden, have not yet put a call across to President-elect, Bola Tinubu, who was declared of Nigeria’s February 25 presidential election.
This is coming as the election was widely allegedly acclaimed to be poorly conducted and rigged in favour of the ruling All Progressives Congress.
In contrast to Buhari’s election victory in April 2015, Tinubu is yet to receive an official congratulation from world leaders including the US President weeks after being declared a winner.
On April 1, 2015, the then French President, François Hollande, the then United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and the then US President, Barack Obama were among the dignitaries who extended their congrats to Buhari.
Hollande had also showed appreciation for the commitment of the Nigerian people and the professionalism exhibited by Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the conduct of the polls.
In his statement issued then on Tuesday, March 31, 2015, Ban Ki-Moon congratulated Buhari on his hard won victory and praised INEC for organising the elections in a professional and credible “manner under challenging circumstances.”
“The INEC, the domestic and foreign observers, civil society, the political parties and above all the Nigerian people themselves. They have shown how a democracy can work; I warmly congratulate Gen. Buhari as the successful Presidential candidate for the All Progressives Congress (APC),”then European Union (EU) High Representative/Vice-President, Federica Mogherini had also said.
But for Tinubu, notable world leaders have kept quiet for days running into weeks amid several domestic calls to re-examine the process and court cases.
Although the US government sent a congratulatory message to Tinubu days after the INEC announcement, some civic groups had berated the US government, saying it “hurriedly congratulated Tinubu despite his fraudulent victory because the US plans to use him as a stooge for the next four years.”
On March 8th, Chatham House, an independent policy institute based in London, in an analysis by one of its fellows said the February 25 presidential election showed that the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC failed to learn new lessons.
The London-based institute had stressed that the electoral umpire failed to adhere to its own guidelines, which it enunciated before the poll, especially the one bordering on the uploading of results in real-time.
“The INEC’s performance and controversies over these results mean that the electoral reforms and lessons declared to have been learned were not fully applied and, as an electoral body, it was significantly less prepared than it claimed.
“The logistical failures of INEC and widespread delayed opening of polling units meant that voters who showed up at the polls early were frustrated and many voters and INEC staff were not able to locate their polling units for several hours,” Chatham House had stated.
The commission’s patchy deployment of technology in the use of a Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), Chatham House added, still being intensely scrutinised and criticised.
