The major candidates in Nigeria’s presidential election have made their final push for support, a week before the West African nation’s critical poll.
As the campaign cycle reached its climax, both the governing party’s Bola Tinubu and the major opposition’s Atiku Abubakar on Saturday staged rallies in the northeast, where Islamists have conducted a decade-long war against Nigeria. They both vowed to enhance the lives of citizens in the area.
On social media, third-party candidate Peter Obi, who has climbed ahead of the other 17 contenders in most surveys, said Africa’s most populous nation needed a “reset and reboot” from the two main parties that have controlled Nigeria since it exited military rule in 1999.
The Feb. 25 election that might lead to a transitional administration is the most momentous vote in recent years for Nigeria, a nation of more than 210 million people, according to experts.
This is a war for the spirit of the nation given the issues facing the country,” said Idayat Hassan, who chairs the Center for Democracy and Development that advocates democracy in the country.
Nigeria is suffering from a deepening security situation that has killed hundreds in the last year, an ailing economy that has made residents poorer, and escalating separatist agitations in the southern area that have left the nation more split along ethnic lines.
This is where the future of our state and the country resides — in the hands of PDP,” the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party’s Abubakar told thousands of supporters in Adamawa state as they waved the party’s red, green and white colours.
“If you give us your mandate, we promise to lead by our promises to make sure that we have a united country, a peaceful country, a buoyant economy for our country; that we have the best education for our children and also we devolve powers to our states and local governments with corresponding resources,” said the 76-year-old, who has taken part in two previous presidential elections, including in 2019 when he lost to incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari.
In Borno state, the hub of the 12-year-long extremism that has upended lives and livelihoods for millions, generating one of the world’s greatest humanitarian crises, Tinubu, of the governing All Progressives Congress, or APC, told multitudes of supporters that “renewed optimism is here; success is returned. We will take care of all of you.”
