Lagos, Nigeria – Late on February 28, three days after Nigeria’s presidential election, Favor Anyim and a friend streamed the live results from the Independent National Electoral Commission. They had high hopes for a victory for Peter Obi, the outsider candidate they had voted for.
As the results trickled in and Obi won and lost on several fronts — by huge margins — the friends were elated, then angry, then exhausted, and went to bed.
At around 4 a.m. the next day, Election Commission Chief Mahmood Yakubu declared Bola Tinubu, the ruling All Progressives Congress candidate, the winner. In second place was Atiku Abubakar of the largest opposition party, the People’s Democratic Party, ahead of Obi of the Workers’ Party.
“I just felt numb. It was a sense of hopelessness,” said Anyim, a 22-year-old law student at Nnamdi Azikwe University.
The election came as Africa’s largest economy struggles after two recessions in five years. Unemployment is high, inflation is rising and uncertainty is rising.
Obi’s emergence as one of the three frontrunners disrupted Nigeria’s traditional two-man presidential contest and gave his supporters, mostly young people, hope for a political turnaround in the country.
Many of his followers have refused to recognize the legitimacy of the president-elect, and a new wave of resentment against the political establishment has emerged.
“The election was a sham. I will not accept Tinubu as my president,” Anyim said. “I’m kind of in limbo waiting to see what will happen after Obi’s petition.”
Waiting for the courts
Obi and Abubakar have petitioned the court to overturn the results, citing widespread electoral malpractice, voter intimidation and violence.
Indeed, observers condemned the conduct of the elections, including the mission of the European Union and a joint mission of the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute.
“The Situation Room’s observation and analysis of the 2023 presidential and national assembly elections indicates that it fell short of the credibility threshold it set as the basis for evaluating the election,” said a statement from a local activist coalition, the Nigeria Civil Society Situation Chamber.
Tinubu has called on his political opponents to release their grievances and get started a “healing process”. His appeal was rejected by the opposition.
As they wait for the cases to be heard in court, young voters say they have little faith in the neutrality of the judiciary in this case.
Nigeria has a long history of contested polls. Seven elections for governor have been quashed since 1999; the first started with a 2003 petition from Obi.
Elsewhere on the continent, the highest courts in Kenya and Malawi have declared the 2017 and 2020 presidential elections invalid. But Nigeria’s Supreme Court has never overturned a presidential result.
Exodus and Lamentations
Obi’s supporters united in the “Obidient” movement, which launched several volunteer initiatives to get many people, mostly new voters, on Election Day.
Although the Labor Party lost at the presidential level, it won a gubernatorial race and 40 seats in the 469-seat Parliament. Political observers called those results a success.
“I think the movement has succeeded, because this is the first time [in Nigeria] when you have this kind of movement that draws on the energy of young people rallying around a single candidate, and you have that candidate that disrupts the two-party system as we’ve always known it,” Ebenezer Obadare, a senior fellow of Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, told Al Jazeera, “So far it was a success.”
Anyim, who campaigned for Obi on her social media accounts and mobilized supporters at rallies, agreed.
“Now him [Obi] didn’t become the president, [the purpose of] the movement has now become much broader for me,” she said. “It now represents to me the possibility that ordinary Nigerians can rise up to uphold the good in our political space, and that is how I want to continue to connect with the movement.”
Still, there are many question marks about the future of the movement. Young people already frustrated by high unemployment, rising inflation and escalating insecurity across the country seem resigned to emigrating abroad in droves.
Among Nigerian youths, immigration is increasingly seen as the only option in the search for better economic opportunities. In the past decade, Nigeria has experienced mass emigration of its skilled workers. According to a 2021 survey by the Africa Polling Institute, seven out of ten Nigerians prefer to leave the country.
Since the election, more people are considering the idea of moving, including Anyim.
“I hadn’t really entertained the idea of moving abroad, but in the aftermath of the election and that the manipulation was so daring, it made me hopeless,” she said. “It was the first time I really entertained the idea of leaving.”
Wale Ayinla, a 25-year-old content marketer in Lagos who also voted for Obi, said he turned down opportunities to leave for the United States twice in the past two years because he hoped for a change in Niger’s governance and standard of living.
But that hope is fading. “Some of us are trying to build a life for ourselves here, but now I’m conspiring [to leave],” he said.
The trend is expected to continue, analysts said.
“Since this [Buhari’s] administration has taken over, we’ve seen a lot of people japa-ing [the Yoruba word for escape]. … Young Nigerians are willing to vote with their feet,” said Olajumoke Ayandele, a postdoctoral researcher at New York University’s Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora.
The lawsuit and the new administration’s initial policies would be key to halting or accelerating emigration, she said.
‘Many have given up on this country’
While the lawsuits are expected to drag on for months, attention is focused on the movement’s future.
Turnout in this year’s presidential election was the lowest in Nigerian history. Only 23 percent of the 93 million registered voters turned out to vote. Those who blamed voter suppression and violence across the country for the low numbers.
Like many other young Obi supporters who pinned their hopes on his candidacy, Ayinla says he is now disillusioned with the country’s future and fears the movement will not maintain its momentum until the next election cycle.
“I don’t think we can last that long because many of us have already given up on this country,” he said. “I just feel like you stole something from us.”
To maintain the movement’s passion until the 2027 presidential election, it must adapt, Obadare said.
“The strengths of the Obidient movement are also its weaknesses,” he told Al Jazeera. “What the Obidients don’t recognize are the limitations of social media as a platform and the limitations of the movement because of its profile — young, educated people but demographically constrained.”
Anyim’s optimism for the election has faded, but she still has some hope that the electoral tribunal hearings, which are expected to last over the next few months, will yield the desired outcome.