“CHANGE”. THE ELECTION-CAMPAIGN slogans of the All Progressives Congress (APC) emblazoned on large billboards across Nigeria in March were light on policy prescriptions. Nigeria’s main opposition group at the time, and now its governing party, offered a simple promise: it would be bound to be better at governing Africa’s most populous nation than the incumbent government of Goodluck Jonathan and his People’s Democratic Party (PDP). “A lot of people were in the anybody-but-Jonathan camp,” says a prominent Nigerian businessman. Yet in the days before the vote on March 28th, amid fear of violence and talk of another military coup, many Nigerians would have been happy just to see a peaceful outcome. The previous election in 2011, Nigeria’s least violent in recent years, still claimed some 700 lives in outbreaks of violence across the north.
So Nigerians’ expectations were limited, which made the latest election all the more remarkable. In the face of vigorous attempts by both parties to rig it (with the PDP seemingly somewhat better-resourced and more successful at it), Nigeria’s independent electoral commission presided over a vote that was the country...
from The Economist: Special report http://ift.tt/1H14YoD
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