Incumbent victorious in flawed Nigerian poll

An article by Reuters' Tume Ahemba states that the recent voting for the position of Incumbent may have been severely flawed. When voters in Anambra , one of Nigeria's most turbulent voting states, showed up to the polls on February 6th only to find their names missing from the ballet, complaints began to surface. Even the candidates themselves, including the winner Peter Obi, noted that there seemed to be some "irregularities".

Voters are now worried that this may be a sign of the returning chaos of last years election which was ravaged by widespread ballot stuffing and voter intimidation. Only 300,000 out of the 1.8 million registered voters took the time to place their ballot.

This severely damages Nigeria's legitimacy and its current status as a democracy. If ballots are stuffed and voter intimidation is used to gain votes, will the people actually trust their government if they're forced to vote for someone? This whole article questions Nigeria's democracy as a whole. One of the fundamental building blocks of democracy is fair and fair elections. As we've seen with last years election of President Yar'Adua and this current election of Peter Obi, the flame of democracy within Nigeria seems to be getting dimmer and dimmer.

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