Valid questions are about to be raised as to whether the new government of Nigeria will collapse, possibly within months.
Political stability in Nigeria—Africa’s most populous nation and its biggest economy—is coming under increasing pressure as domestic and international threats emerge to the credibility of the election of Bola Tinubu to the presidency in the Feb. 25 polls. As a result, Mr. Tinubu and his team have been working to suborn the legal and information framework to overturn the collapse of public trust in his administration.
Badly managed, the looming crisis could bring further instability to West Africa and possibly all of Africa and global energy markets.
Now, even as legal challenges to the election go to the Supreme Court, major allegations of fraud are being mounted against the former Lagos Governor. He’s accused of fraud and forgery in initially registering his candidacy for the presidency, and the release of a spate of U.S. official documents lends credence to that.
Nigeria’s Independent National Election Commission (INEC) ruled that Mr. Tinubu (of the APC: All Progressives Congress) had won the election in the first round, even though he received only 36.61 percent of the votes, carried only 12 of the 36 states, and failed to win the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), which is required by the Nigerian Constitution. The low vote and failure to win the constitutionally mandated FCT meant that the INEC should have called for a second round of voting between the two leading contenders.
The prima facie case that the INEC couldn’t constitutionally accept the first-round election of Mr. Tinubu hasn’t been contested. Yet on appeal, the presidential election tribunal stated on Sept. 6 that the main opposition parties had failed to prove claims of electoral malpractice against the APC in the February election. As a result, the second-place candidate, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar (of the PDP: People’s Democratic Party), and third-place candidate, Peter Obi (of the Labour Party), immediately took their cases to the Nigerian Supreme Court, which is scheduled to review the petitions in October.
Mr. Obi, leader of the Labour Party, in his earlier petitions, cited the fact that Mr. Tinubu had committed fraud in his sworn application documents for the election. Although this was disregarded in the election tribunal’s determination, it was clearly of key concern.
In September, the U.S. FBI stated that it held roughly 2,500 pages of documents detailing the activities of Mr. Tinubu during his time in the United States in the 1990s. It stated that it would begin publicly releasing those documents at the rate of 500 pages per month from Oct. 18. The Tinubu administration immediately indicated that it would attempt to suppress the reporting of these documents in the Nigerian media and had already denied time on the Nigerian government-owned broadcasting media and the extensive Tinubu-owned broadcasting and print media to Mr. Atiku and Mr. Obi.
Significantly, there were not only allegations that INEC officials had been induced to rule unconstitutionally that Mr. Tinubu won the initial election (and that a runoff wasn’t required) but also allegations that the election tribunal, which adjudicated appeals, had also been induced to support the claim of a Mr. Tinubu victory. Moreover, there was also clear evidence that the INEC had ignored a large Nigerian media attempt, through investigative journalism in the United States, to present details of Mr. Tinubu’s criminal and fraudulent dealings during his time in the United States, including fraud, forgery, and possible identity theft in claiming an educational path that apparently didn’t exist.
These fraudulent education documents, along with timelines of his career, formed part of his sworn applications for candidacy in the presidential election.
His plea bargaining to avoid jail time for narcotics trafficking in Chicago in the 1990s, costing him some $460,000, also wasn’t admitted into evidence nor acknowledged by the INEC.
This evidence is not only now becoming available for the Supreme Court challenge but also to the Nigerian public, despite the Tinubu government’s attempt to gag the media. Much of the information is now circulating on social media in Nigeria, and it’s anticipated that the administration could attempt to suppress that. However, there’s a significant audience in Nigeria for foreign direct broadcasts, including those by the BBC of the UK (in Hausa as well as English), Voice of America, and others, and this couldn’t be interrupted by a government gag.
Moreover, the U.S. government has indicated that several other federal agencies have substantial files on Mr. Tinubu, and those agencies—including the State Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the CIA, and the IRS—would also now begin releasing information on Mr. Tinubu. The U.S. government said little during and after the election and the subsequent appeal, which raises the question of why Washington waited until the Supreme Court hearings to begin the deluge of data.
It may have been stalled in an attempt to not be seen influencing the Nigerian political scene. Still, various agencies, including the FBI, faced Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) filings by a Nigerian journalist and U.S. bodies. Failure to release the data until after the Supreme Court challenges would have been interpreted as a very definite attempt by the United States to influence the political environment in Nigeria, giving support to Mr. Tinubu.
Significantly, he had been anticipating a meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden on the margins of the U.N. General Assembly in New York in September, but this was quietly called off by the United States.
It was known by Oct. 8 that seven Supreme Court justices had been tagged to hear the appeals of Mr. Atiku and Mr. Obi. It was also known at that time that pressures had begun on all those justices to sway their opinions in favor of Mr. Tinubu. There’s a strong prospect that some or all could be swayed, despite the fundamental and underlying reality that—other crimes aside—Mr. Tinubu didn’t win a first-round election and a second-round runoff should have been called.
While that remains a central tenet of the appeal, both challenging candidates indicate that they wish to press the fact that Mr. Tinubu should never have been allowed to run for office in the first place, based on the fraud he committed in his candidate application forms.
The evidence already apparent from Mr. Tinubu’s time in the United States indicates that he used multiple identities and several U.S. Social Security numbers (including one or more that were clearly fraudulent) and fabricated his educational qualifications at Chicago State University. As a result, it’s still uncertain under what name Mr. Tinubu entered the United States or even what his actual date of birth is. So there are questions as to his real name and personal details.
The FOIA request was first filed in 2022 by Aaron Greenspan, who runs PlainSite, an anti-corruption and political transparency website, in collaboration with Nigerian journalist David Hundeyin. So it’s clear that the United States, by holding back the information initially, already allowed the February election to take place under less than transparent conditions.
A range of outcomes are possible. A failure by the Supreme Court to admit the basic unconstitutionality of the Feb. 25 election would almost certainly result in widespread public outrage. It’s also known that members of the National Assembly (the House of Representatives and the Senate) are prepared to begin immediate impeachment proceedings against Mr. Tinubu, as well as impeachment or censure proceedings and criminal charges against INEC officials, the election tribunal, and the Supreme Court justices.
These steps are unprecedented in Nigerian political history and are largely possible because the Nigerian Armed Forces have essentially committed themselves to avoid attempting to overthrow corrupt or corruptly elected governments by military coups d’etat. For the first time, this has left the process—at least initially—in the hands of the political and judicial bodies, even though there has been persistent evidence that Nigerian courts can be subject to immense pressures, including bribery. Mr. Tinubu, at this stage, has shown himself prepared to use whatever tools are available—including massive funding of bribery operations—to retain his position.
The Supreme Court, however, if it sees that a pro-Tinubu verdict would only destroy the court’s credibility and open its justices to criminal indictment, could offer a number of options. These could include invalidating the Feb. 25 election entirely and calling fresh elections. It could also invalidate the INEC decision to award the victory to the Tinubu team and call for the second round of the election between the two leading candidates (Mr. Tinubu and Mr. Atiku). Or it could invalidate the outcome because Mr. Tinubu wasn’t qualified to run for office on the basis of his fraud on his application documents and award the election to the Atiku team. And there are other variations on these themes possible.
To get to that point, the threat of impeachment and censure, not only of Mr. Tinubu but also of the court officials, may be critical, and these would be given force only if international pressures matched the domestic protests. And global awareness was, by mid-October, beginning to be evidenced. Several U.S. media outlets have tackled the issue, and an Oct. 10 national U.S. broadcast on the CBS radio network opened a broader U.S. public and political awareness of the issue.
It’s also likely that the growing legal and political momentum against the Tinubu seizure of victory will also be matched “on the streets” of Nigerian cities. Initially, it was known there would be a strong police response to any unrest, supported by the Armed Forces in an internal security function. But this is unlikely to be sustainable, given that it would lead to possibly the most significant fracturing of Nigerian society since independence in 1960.
Could the Armed Forces be induced to intervene again? It isn’t inconceivable, although it would likely be a limited intervention to force space for new elections this time, given the military’s antipathy for governing (based on earlier experience).
In any event, a prolonged delay in redressing the election outcome would certainly affect Nigeria’s security and economic conditions. The war against Islamist insurgencies, already damaged by the coup in neighboring Niger, has already been interrupted, and this, too, has allowed a rise in banditry on an industrial scale in parts of the country (particularly the North and the Niger Delta).
Any destabilization of the Nigerian economy would have a ripple effect on West Africa and the stature of regional and continental bodies, such as the Economic Community of West African States and the African Union.
