The final stage of Nigeria’s election begins today with state governorship polls, two weeks after a presidential vote saw an incumbent leader unseated for the first time.
The 36 governors are among the most powerful politicians in Africa’s biggest oil producing and top economy, controlling budgets larger than those of small African nations and wielding influence that can decide who goes on presidential tickets. Voting starts at 8 a.m.
With so much at stake, candidates in past polls have often played dirty games, snatching ballot boxes, manipulating voter turn-out and engaging in thuggery and intimidation.
Muhammadu Buhari beat President Goodluck Jonathan last month with 15.4 million votes against 13.3 million, in an election that was considered free and less violent than past polls.
Yet for many Nigerians, who their governor is matters more than who sits in the faraway capital Abuja.
“It will be slightly dirtier, a bit rougher in some places. Locals are more INVESTED in the process around them. The federal government is like a no man’s land,” said Folarin Gbadebo-Smith, head of Nigeria’s Centre for Public Policy Alternatives.
Legislative polls also shifted power away from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), which has run Nigeria since the end of military rule in 1999, to the All Progressives Congress (APC). It left the APC with a majority in both houses.
The APC is seeking to build on its gains, while the PDP will hope it can claw back power, especially in two battlegrounds – the megacity of Lagos, the country’s economic engine generating up to a third of its GDP, and the oil hub of Rivers.
Both are currently APC, Rivers only because its sitting governor defected.
Both could be magnets for trouble, as could the northern swing state of Kaduna, which saw hundreds killed in sectarian violence after the 2011 presidential election.
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