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Bola Tinubu reacts after he was declared the winner in Nigeria's presidential election at his party's campaign headquarters, in Abuja.
Nigeria elects political “Godfather" as president
It took a while and there was a lot of post-election drama, but Nigeria finally has a new president-elect: Bola Tinubu.
The ruling party candidate was declared the winner early Wednesday, five days after a vote marred by a slower-than-expected count and problems with tallying. Before the electoral commission made the call, Tinubu's rivals had demanded that officials cancel the result and redo the election because the outcome had been “manipulated” by results sheets being posted online.
While any legal challenges to his victory by opposition hopeful Atiku Abubakar and insurgent third-party candidate Peter Obi make their way through the courts, Tinubu is the president-elect and officially takes over in May. Who is he, and what are his plans for Africa's most populous nation and largest economy?
Known as Nigeria's political "Godfather," the former governor of Lagos has a lot of experience. So much, in fact, that his campaign pitch was: "It's my turn."
For his supporters, Tinubu — who wears a skullcap emblazoned with broken shackles to symbolize his freedom after dictator Sani Abacha forced him into exile — is a savvy politico who knows how to exercise power in front of and behind the scenes. He transformed Nigeria's biggest city from a chaotic asphalt jungle into a bustling metropolis by attracting foreign investment.
But his critics argue that Tinubu is just another member of the corrupt political class who can't justify his vast wealth. What's more, he's alienated Christians by picking a fellow Muslim as his running mate, and his poor health at 70 means that he might not be up to the job. (No way, says Tinubu, who during the campaign showed off his stamina by posting a video on an exercise bike.)
Fears about his fitness seem overblown to Amaka Anku, Eurasia Group’s top Africa analyst.
“Despite his health issues, Tinubu is much more assertive than [current President Muhammadu] Buhari. He follows issues, he is engaged, he is a politician. He is unlike Buhari, who doesn’t talk,” she says. “As a Nigerian president, you have to be the coach and the referee.”
Tinubu hopes to fix Nigeria's (many) problems by first curing its economic ills. He wants to massively improve revenue generation for the state, which he excelled at when he ran Lagos. Similarly, he aims to limit borrowing and draw in foreign cash.
Also, "Tinubu has a clear brain trust around him," Anku says. And as the ruling party's pick, he is "well placed to move quickly" on unpopular yet unavoidable policies such as nixing fuel subsidies, which last year cost the government $10 billion it could hardly afford.
Yet, he's the first Nigerian president to win the top job without a popular majority — and his rivals have cried foul over his victory. The opposition has 21 days to legally challenge the results, but then it could take up to eight months for the dispute to be resolved — like in 2019, when the supreme court threw out Abubakar’s contest against Buhari’s re-election.
Supporters of the losing candidates have already taken to the streets of Lagos and Abuja. Whether the protests turn into widespread unrest will largely depend on what the president-elect and other politicians say and do over the next few days and weeks.
What does this outcome mean for popular confidence in elections? "Low trust in Nigerian democracy isn’t based on process issues but rather on the state's inability to deliver" things like public services or security, Anku says. The failure to do so explains why satisfaction with democracy has plummeted from 84% in 2000 to 21% in 2022.
While the process might look messy now, it has improved a lot since Nigeria ended military rule in 1999. For instance, she adds, having a competitive third-party candidate like Obi "is a huge deal.”
"This would not happen in the US today. And it's a clear expression of the people’s discontent and frustration with the political establishment," Anku says. "People just need to get used to the fact that you may not always get the candidate you want."
British PM Rishi Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen shake hands at Windsor Guildhall, Britain, February 27, 2023.
What We’re Watching: Post-Brexit trade, West Bank chaos, Nigeria’s vote count, Teddies for Turkey
A historic post-Brexit breakthrough
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen unveiled a plan on Monday they say will finally resolve the complex problem of post-Brexit trade involving Northern Ireland. In the coming days, skeptics (and opponents) of the deal within Sunak’s Conservative Party and the Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland will read the proposal closely to decide whether to approve it. The deal is intended to ease the flow of trade between Britain and Northern Ireland, some of which will flow across the UK’s border with the Republic of Ireland and into the EU. The deal creates two lanes for trade: a faster-flowing green lane for goods transiting only between Britain and Northern Ireland and a red lane with more rigorous customs checks for goods bound for the EU. The two biggest (of many) issues that will now be debated in Britain’s parliament: How to determine which lane each shipment of goods will travel through and what role the European Court of Justice will play in resolving trade disputes that involve Northern Ireland. Sunak appears to believe that his plan will pass parliament, but the scale of this important political victory for the embattled PM will depend on how much opposition from his own party and the DUP force him to rely on the opposition Labour Party for the votes needed to get it done. Sunak was in Belfast on Tuesday to sell the deal to the DUP.
West Bank on the brink
The West Bank experienced one of the largest single acts of settler violence on Sunday, when scores of Jewish settlers stormed the town of Hawara, near Nablus, torching vehicles and houses and leaving at least one Palestinian dead. The assailants said it was a “revenge” attack for the shooting of two Israeli brothers by a Palestinian gunman. (Another Israeli was killed in the West Bank on Monday.) This comes as the security situation in the occupied West Bank has been deteriorating for the better part of a year, with a spate of deadly Palestinian attacks in Israel leading to raids on Palestinian terror cells by the Israeli army. While the Israeli Defense Forces have been criticized for not acting fast enough to quell the violence in Hawara, recent events have revealed stark divisions within the far-right government of PM Benjamin Netanyahu. While some members of the government egged on the settlers – including the finance minister, who originally supported calls for burning down Hawara before walking it back – Netanyahu, for his part, gave a rare speech calling on Israelis not to take the law into their own hands and condemning "anarchy." Many analysts say this is a sign that the strong-minded leader fears he’s losing control of the security situation in the West Bank, a sensitive issue that will continue to deepen government fissures if it goes unchecked. Indeed, Bibi can’t afford cracks in his coalition after a new poll found that he would lose elections if they were held today.
Nigerian election count walk-out
Nigeria's two main opposition parties on Monday walked out of the site where results from Saturday's presidential election are being gradually announced after crying fraud over the slower-than-expected electronic transmission of results from polling stations. But according to Amaka Anku, Eurasia Group's top Africa analyst, there is a process for political parties to register complaints over election results related to the new system without having to abandon the premises. All political party agents, she explains, receive copies of the results sheets from each polling station and must sign off on the tallies at various stages of the counting process well before the national count begins. Those are the same sheets that are then uploaded onto a publicly available website. Nonetheless, the inability of the electoral commission to meet the high expectations it created — that those sheets would be immediately published — "casts a shadow over the whole process," says Anku. Final results are now expected on Tuesday, with ruling party candidate Bola Tinubu in the lead so far.
Teddy bears for quake survivor kids in Turkey
It's not all bad news out there. On Sunday, fans attending a Turkish league soccer game in Istanbul between local club Beşiktaş and Antalyaspor in Istanbul showered the field with teddy bears and other toys to be donated to child survivors of the recent earthquakes, the worst natural disaster in Turkey's history. The outpouring of support happened when the match was stopped for a moment of silence at 4 minutes and 17 seconds, marking the exact time — 4:17 am on Feb. 6 — when the first quake struck. But once the ceremony ended, it all got political, with thousands of members of the Çarşı, a hardcore Beşiktaş fan club, chanting to demand that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan step down over his handling of the catastrophe and lax building standards enforced prior to it. There's no love lost between him and the famously left-wing, working-class Çarşı, rabidly loyal Beşiktaş fans with an anti-authoritarian streak whom Erdoğan knows will definitely not vote for him in the May 14 election.
A day after the elections, officials tally votes at a collation centre previously stormed by unknown assailants in Lagos, Nigeria on February 26, 2023.
What We’re Watching: Nigerian election results, Italian migrant tragedy, COVID lab leak report
Nigeria starts presidential vote count
Early results from Nigeria's presidential election are still trickling in Monday, as delays at some polling stations forced people to vote throughout the night on Saturday and the following day. Final numbers could take days, especially if the race is very tight. So far, the big news is that Peter Obi, a third-party insurgent posing the most serious threat to the Nigerian political establishment since the restoration of democracy in 1999, captured Lagos, the country's biggest city and state. Obi is facing off against ruling party candidate Bola Ahmed Tinubu and opposition hopeful Atiku Abubakar. To avoid a runoff, a candidate must win the popular vote and 25% of ballots in at least two-thirds of Nigeria's 36 states. Whoever comes out on top, the final result "will most likely leave a large chunk of Nigerians upset," tweeted Amaka Anku, head of Eurasia Group's Africa practice, who's covering the election on the ground. Anku highlighted the low voter turnout — although it's unclear whether fewer people actually showed up or if biometric ID verification prevented unregistered people from voting.
Migrant boat sinks off Italian coast
At least 62 people, including children, died after a rickety wooden boat carrying approximately 150 migrants sank off the coast of southern Italy on Sunday. Search and rescue teams found 80 survivors, all of them adults. The number of migrants crossing violent seas from northern Africa to reach Europe has accelerated recently, with 105,000 intercepted by Italy last year, up 38,000 from 2021. Far-right Italian PM Giorgia Meloni, who has vowed to crack down hard on asylum-seekers trying to arrive by sea, blamed human traffickers and demanded more help from EU leaders to address the crisis, while the opposition 5-Star Party derided her government’s migration policy. Meloni has placed restrictions on charity boats and refused to accept rescue ships, demanding other countries take in more refugees. Meloni's hardline stance on migration remains at odds with human rights groups and Brussels as well as most individual EU member states, but she is unlikely to back down — after all, she was elected by Italians to be tougher on this issue, which provokes strong emotions on both sides.
Where did COVID come from?
Did COVID-19 come from a lab? Some time ago, that was considered unlikely, but now a classified and updated US Energy Department report says the virus most likely came from a laboratory leak. This is a significant development because of the considerable scientific expertise at the DOE’s disposal, though it reportedly has “low confidence” in the finding. The FBI reached a similar conclusion a while back, yet opinions in the US intelligence community are as polarized as they can be, as other agencies maintain that the pandemic began with a transmission from animals to humans. The only thing most seem to agree on is that the virus was not part of a Chinese biological weapons program. The finding, which the DOE says is based on new evidence (yet no details are available), underscores the continuing controversy over the origins of COVID, the emergence of which, as well as China’s secrecy over it, has been a significant source of tension between Beijing and the rest of the word. Still, what has changed from a few months ago is that the lab leak theory has gone from mere conspiracy theory to something that just might be a plausible explanation to something we will probably never have a definitive answer to: where COVID really came from.World Bank Group President David Malpass speaks to the media in Washington, D.C. in 2022.
Hard Numbers: World Bank chief resigns, Another Russian journalist jailed, Ukraine’s humanitarian needs, pessimistic Nigerians, good riddance Johns Hopkins tracker
12: World Bank President David Malpass, tapped by former President Donald Trump, announced Wednesday that he’ll step down this summer, roughly 12 months before his term expires. Malpass has been mired in controversy in recent months after he refused to say whether fossil fuels are warming the planet. (Malpass spoke to GZERO Media amid the controversy, saying he’s not a climate change denier.)
6: Russian journalist Maria Ponomarenko has been handed a six-year jail sentence for posting on social media that Russian planes were responsible for an attack last March on Ukrainian civilians hiding in a theater in Mariupol. Following the verdict, Ponomarenko, a mother of two, said: “No totalitarian regime has ever been as strong as before its collapse."
5.6 billion: The UN said Wednesday that $5.6 billion is needed to provide humanitarian aid to the tens of millions of Ukrainians impacted by the war, including around 4 million who have resettled in Eastern Europe. But with the situation in Turkey and Syria continuing to deteriorate, Ukraine fundraisers could now have a tougher time securing Western aid dollars.
90: Ahead of general elections on Feb. 25, a whopping 90% of Nigerians say that the country is headed in the wrong direction, the worst outlook ever recorded. For a look at what’s at stake in the election, see this primer.
3: After more than three years in action, the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 tracker will stop updating its data on March 10. The dashboard started publishing global pandemic statistics in Jan. 2020 and has been viewed more than 2.5 billion times since. We won’t miss you, Johns Hopkins tracker.Google Bard seen on Google blog post with Google logo on mobile, in Brussels, Belgium.
What We're Watching: Bard bot, Nigerian election heats up, Tibetan kids pulled away
Google's Bard vs. ChatGPT
Google has soft-launched Bard, the tech giant's answer to OpenAI's uber-popular ChatGPT artificial intelligence chatbot. Why should you care? Well, Google says that Bard will "outsmart" ChatGPT, a service that has taken the world by storm since it became a thing in late 2022 and is now backed by Microsoft. But how? Bard will be up to date on current events — giving it a leg up over ChatGPT, which is stuck in 2021. Also, Bard will run on something called Language Model for Dialogue Applications or LaMDA, which is so advanced that last year Google fired an engineer who declared that LaMDA was "sentient" because it could mimic human emotions. This is where it gets tricky, since theoretically this type of AI could be used to make deepfake videos virtually indistinguishable from real ones. And that, in turn, might someday unleash political mayhem befitting a "Black Mirror" episode. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. So far, access to Bard is by invite only, and Google likely has guardrails in place to ensure its new AI platform doesn't become too smart for its own good.
Nigeria nears decision day
Some people simply refuse to take no for an answer. Atiku Abubakar, known widely by his first name, is now making his sixth run for president of Nigeria in an election set for February 25. Atiku did serve as vice president under Olusegun Obasanjo from 1999 to 2007, but the now 76-year-old candidate is making a determined run to finally win the top job. He should be careful what he wishes for. Nigeria’s next president will wrestle with a COVID-damaged economy that’s still recovering from two recessions in five years and the ongoing security challenges posed by terrorist group Boko Haram in the country’s north, secessionists in the southeast, and well-armed criminal gangs in multiple regions. His campaign presents him as a “unifier,” not an easy sell in a country polarized along regional and religious lines. Still, he might actually win this time. His main opponents are the favorite, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who represents the currently unpopular ruling party of outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari, and a compelling outsider, Peter Obi, who doesn’t have a well-organized party behind him with local officials to help get out the vote.
China is separating Tibetan children from families
Over 1 million ethnic Tibetan children are being forcibly separated from their families and placed in residential schools in China’s bid to assimilate them into the majority Han culture, according to UN experts. The youngsters only visit home for one or two weeks a year, and because they have not practised their native tongue, many struggle to communicate with their parents. This is the latest example of the Tibetan way of life coming increasingly under threat as part of the systematic “ideological education” policies targeting Chinese minorities under Xi Jinping. Chinese officials insist they are determined to promote ethnic culture, but Tibetan monks and nuns are also dispatched to “transformation through education” facilities, where they endure reported sexual abuse and torture — much like Uighurs suffer in reeducation camps in the northwestern Xinjiang region. The “Land of Snows” has long endured repression since China, but resistance there to the ruling Communist Party — which last erupted into a failed uprising in 2008 — is likely to be further blunted by increased state surveillance, including phone hacking, spying on villages, and even DNA collection.
Nigeria’s Risky Business
Nigeria's president and his challenger in hotly-contested elections are blaming each other for a Eurasia Group report that listed their country as among the world's top risks for 2019.
The report detailed Nigeria's "intractable problems," and said presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, would "focus on enriching himself and his cronies" should he triumph. The report also called President Muhammadu Buhari "politically weak," "elderly" and "infirm." Both camps reportedly claimed the report was paid for by the opposing party. But a spokesman for President Muhammadu Buhari went further, asking the New York-based organization to produce a medical report of the president to verify its findings. "If that group does not publish an authenticated medical report along with their report, they should hide their head in shame," Buhari Campaign spokesman Festus Keyamo reportedly said. Nigerians head to the polls on February 16 in their country's most fiercely sought after elections since the transition to democracy in 1999.