Nigeria 2023 general elections took place between 25th February and 18th March 2023 with Presidential and National Assembly elections held on Saturday 25th February while Gubernatorial and House of Assembly was conducted on 18th March 2023. There were lots of issues emanating from conduct of the elections as expected, however, in my article today, I would like to discuss an issue which probably has taken backstage in ongoing post-election analysis by various interested parties – Impact of elections campaign on fortune of candidates.
The impact of electioneering campaigns witnessed across the length and breadth of Nigeria since July 2022 when most of the political parties submitted their parties’ candidates to Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) can only be assessed with the results – number of votes received by each candidate. I would like to narrow my discussion on Presidential election considering the high-level electioneering that happened via all available communication channels from social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and of course, Twitter.
The traditional media like television stations, radio stations, tabloids and newspapers were not left behind with adverts by parties’ candidates, interviews, jingles and more.
The most visible and richly entertaining form of the campaign tools used is States tours where political party candidates move from one state to another touring the entire thirty-six states of the Federation and Abuja although it was reported that some presidential candidates did not cover the entire country but almost all the presidential candidates campaigned in at least 20 states of the Federation.
This State tour campaign system normally involves the use of open field or stadium or big avenue where lots of party faithful and supporters of the candidate will gather to listen to what the candidate intends to do if elected to the office being sought. Huge fund goes into organizing these rallies from securing comfortable and strategic venue (where supporters are expected to gather), making logistics arrangement to move supporters from various parts of the State even neighboring states sometimes, to security arrangement to prevent unwanted events, etc.
Given the huge fund and popularity of the state tour campaign, it is popular belief that the more people or crowd a candidate can pull at campaign ground, the more votes the candidate will garner from the state. This popular opinion was put to test during the February 25, 2023, Presidential election in Nigeria and the result was amazing- mix of bags.
Using the top five states with highest number of votes (combined) for top four presidential candidates from the result declared by INEC on 1st March 2023 as presented below[1], I will correlate their electoral fortunes in top 5 states as per total number of received voters during the election vis-à-vis the nature of crowd each candidate was able to pull during the campaign in those five states.
| STATE | APC | PDP | LP | NNPP | Total Votes |
| KANO | 517,341.00 | 131,716.00 | 28,513.00 | 997,279.00 | 1,674,849.00 |
| KADUNA | 399,293.00 | 554,360.00 | 294,494.00 | 92,969.00 | 1,341,116.00 |
| LAGOS | 572,606.00 | 75,750.00 | 582,454.00 | 8,442.00 | 1,239,252.00 |
| KATSINA | 482,283.00 | 489,045.00 | 6,376.00 | 69,386.00 | 1,047,090.00 |
| PLATEAU | 307,195.00 | 243,808.00 | 466,272.00 | 8,869.00 | 1,026,144.00 |
The All-Progressive Party (APC) was widely acclaimed and accepted that APC being the ruling party had most glamorous campaign tours of states for the recently held general elections. The mammoth crowds that witnessed the Party rallies in Kano, Kaduna, and Lagos states were described by many political analysts as unprecedented. The Party rallies in Katsina (home of incumbent President from APC) as well and Plateau (where the Party launched her campaign) were also attended by thousands of supporters and well-wishers.
However, the above election results in these five states showed that APC did not win any of the five states despite mammoth crowds recorded during the campaign thereby negates the popular belief that the more people or crowd a candidate can pull at campaign ground, the more votes the candidate will garner from the state.
While the above analysis may seem simplistic and not enough to generalize the inference, it nevertheless points to the fact that having mammoth crowd during campaigns does not guarantee success at the poll.
[1] 2023 Presidential Election Results By States (Declared by INEC) – Vanguard News (vanguardngr.com)
