2023 Elections: Why you must go out and vote

Every election is always the most important, no matter what time it takes place, and every single one of them has valid reasons to be rated so highly.

In 1999, Nigeria needed someone to lead the country out of the military jungle of the previous 16 years and, with no sense of irony, found Olusegun Obasanjo, a former military general. That conversation was revisited four years later but Obasanjo remained the answer, and an attempt to prolong his stay with a possible third term collapsed.

Olusegun Obasanjo led Nigeria into the fourth republic AFP

With Obasanjo’s time at an end, the 2007 election was important because it marked the first peaceful transfer of power from one democratic president to another since the country's 1960 independence from the colonisers.

When President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua died just a year before the 2011 election, with his vice-president, Goodluck Jonathan, taking over the reins, the nation's dissatisfaction with the stewardship of the People's Democratic Party (PDP) was starting to gather steam. Nigerians were starting to cry out for options, but a certain Muhammadu Buhari was yet to gain the required national foothold to rival the ruling party at the time.

But, four years later when Jonathan made a controversial bid for a second term, the sentiment was strong that it was time for Nigeria to explore other options.

The country was one of the fastest growing economies in the world, no doubt, but the perception of the Jonathan government as corrupt made a huge dent in his re-election bid. In search of a solution to Nigeria’s leadership problem, Nigerians found Buhari and crowned him in 2015 as the country's turning-point leader.

Muhammadu Buhari swept to power on the wave of dissatisfaction with the country's leadership, a wave that's even stronger after nearly eight years of his own leadership Pulse Nigeria

Buhari promised to change Nigeria and he did, just not in the way millions of the people who pushed him to power anticipated. Despite the misalignment between what Nigerians ordered and what the president delivered, he won a second term in 2019 to the distress of Atiku Abubakar, a perennial contender who was certain he'd fired up enough of the country's tired population to desire a change of government.

He was wrong, not necessarily because Nigerians weren't tired and desperate at the time, but maybe so overwhelmed that enough of them didn't care to go out to vote on election day.

Nigeria’s voting record is a cause for concern

Enough Nigerians are not participating in elections and that needs to change AFP

The most curious thing about Nigeria's voting pattern over the past 24 years is that as each new election cycle became more critical than the last one, more and more people became disinterested and would rather stay home on election day.

The voter turnout rate for the 2003 presidential election was 69%, which meant 69 out of every 100 registered voters went to their polling units and voted. Sadly, the turnout rate started a progressively backward slide in successive cycles — 58% in 2007, 54% in 2011 and 44% for the 2015 contest which was regarded as Nigeria's most momentous election at the time. But that was not even the bottom of the barrel.

Almost fresh from a recession, troubling levels of insecurity and frustrated by a government which appeared completely lost at sea, only 35% of voters bothered to participate in the 2019 presidential election, a gift Buhari was all too willing to embrace.

The turnout rate in Nigerian elections has been going down since 2003 Pulse Nigeria

It's time again for another election which is considered the most defining, not just for a generation of young people, but also for the nation’s soul. But you have to ignore the bluster because we've been here before, repeatedly.

What needs to change in 2023?

Nigeria's terrible voter turnout problem isn't simply an issue of voters deciding to sit at home on election day for kicks.

It's a problem borne out of deliberate strategies by Nigerian politicians to make people lose trust in the system enough to decide not to participate. This way, it’s easier for them to impose their own will rather than allow the people to decide.

Decades of wanton violence, electoral malpractices and pollution of all that's holy with democracy have balled up into apathy that's perpetuated itself in the electorate’s consciousness.

More Nigerians need to get out to vote [AFP] AFP

Nigeria's terrible voter turnout problem isn't simply an issue of voters deciding to sit at home on election day for kicks.

It's a problem borne out of deliberate strategies by Nigerian politicians to make people lose trust in the system enough to decide not to participate. This way, it’s easier for them to impose their own will rather than allow the people to decide.

Decades of wanton violence, electoral malpractices and pollution of all that's holy with democracy have balled up into apathy that's perpetuated itself in the electorate’s consciousness.

The politicians have plotted to convince the electorate that votes don't matter because they can always game the system anyway, and the strategy is working if you look at the cold data.

But the buildup to the 2023 elections is already showing a shifting energy, one led by young people desperate to make a generation-defining statement — it's not business as usual.

And the numbers aren't lying about that shifting energy — the 86.6% PVC collection rate of 2019 has jumped to an impressive 93.3% in 2023, despite adding over nine million new registrations over the past year. As a result of this progress, the uncollected PVC rate of 13.4% four years ago has halved to 6.7% heading into the 2023 elections.

Half the work is already done, but the most critical part remains going out to vote on February 25, 2023.

The signs are already looking good that Nigeria's voter turnout rate will start an upward trajectory in 2023 [More Branches] Pulse Nigeria

If your reason for not voting is the realisation that politicians mess with the process enough to make your ballot useless, you have to consider the fact that casting your vote makes the process harder for them to rig.

The government certainly needs to make the electoral process more transparent and improve trust to get Nigerians to go out to vote, but regardless of the situation, every voter should do the bare minimum and vote.

Elections are about who shows up to vote, and if you refuse to make that choice, someone else will make it for you. The power for the change you want to see is at the tip of your fingers, and you must exercise it.