The 2019 presidential election held on Saturday, February 23, has been rated the best so far in our records of presidential elections in Nigeria since 1979. And all the accredited international observers reported that the results from the polling units for the presidential election were verified as authentic without electoral malpractices by the officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). But Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the main opposition People's Democratic Party (PDP) who lost to the incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari of the ruling party, All Progressives Congress (APC) has challenged the results announced by INEC, with allegations of electoral malpractices.
Anyone who has not witnessed previous elections cannot say whether the electoral process of the 2019 presidential election is the best or the worst since 1979. The 2015 presidential was the bloodiest and the most rigged presidential election since 1979. Anyone who disagrees with our summation is apparently ignorant of eye witness accounts of the "Rivers of Blood" in Rivers State; attacks and murders in other states and unprecedented electoral malpractices in the south east, south-south and other states in Nigeria during the 2015 presidential election under the maladministration of the former national ruling party, PDP.
The second most rigged presidential election was in 2007 that even the winner, the presidential candidate of the People's Democratic Party (PDP), Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, GCFR (16 August 1951 – 5 May 2010) admitted and confessed to the press that his party rigged the presidential election that made him President
In the presidential election, held on 21 April 2007, Yar'Adua won with 70% of the vote (24.6 million votes) according to official results released on 23 April. The election was highly controversial. Strongly criticized by observers, as well as the two primary opposition candidates, Muhammadu Buhari of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and Atiku Abubakar of the Action Congress (AC), its results were largely rejected as having been rigged in Yar'Adua's favor.
Election observers from the European Union described the elections as "the worst they had ever seen anywhere in the world", with "rampant vote rigging, violence, theft of ballot boxes and intimidation."
After the election, Yar'Adua proposed a government of national unity. In late June 2007, two opposition parties, the ANPP and the Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA), agreed to join Yar'Adua's government.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Nigerian_general_election.
The funniest and stupidest critics of the 2019 presidential election are the Nigerian millennials who are clueless about the political history of presidential elections in Nigeria and many of them like a popular noisy opposition hip hop artiste did not even vote and was miles away from any polling booth in Nigeria. The predicament of these fringe elements of Nigerian youths is they are ignorant of their own intellectual ignorance.
It is best they shut up!
~ By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima, a leading writer on Nigerian political leadership with over 29 years experience in presidential campaigns in Nigeria. He is a former special aide to the Director of Publicity for the Alhaji Bamanga Tukur's Presidential Campaign in 1990. He is the author of The Victory of Muhammadu Buhari and the Nigerian Dream (with 94% positive 2,634 Sellers rating) and other books distributed by Amazon, Barnes&Noble and other booksellers worldwide.
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