Exactly 15 days since the declaration of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Candidate as winner of the February 25 election, influential world leaders, including United States President Joe Biden, are yet to put phone calls across to President-elect Tinubu.
There are widespread allegations that the election was poorly conducted and rigged in favour of the ruling APC.
In contrast to Buhari’s election victory of April 2015, Tinubu is yet to receive official congratulatory messages from world leaders including the US President, weeks after being declared winner of the vote.
On April 1, 2015, the then French President, François Hollande, the then United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and the then US President Barack Obama, were among the dignitaries who extended their congratulations to Buhari.
Hollande had also showed appreciation for the commitment of the Nigerian people and the professionalism exhibited by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the conduct of the polls.
In his statement issued on Tuesday, March 31, 2015, Ban Ki-Moon congratulated Buhari on his hard won victory and praised INEC for organising the elections in a professional and credible “manner under challenging circumstances.”
“The INEC, the domestic and foreign observers, civil society, the political parties and above all the Nigerian people themselves. They have shown how a democracy can work; I warmly congratulate Gen. Buhari as the successful Presidential candidate for the All Progressives Congress (APC),” then European Union (EU) High Representative/Vice-President, Federica Mogherini had also said.
But for Tinubu, notable world leaders have kept quiet for days running into weeks, amid several domestic calls to re-examine the process and court cases.
Recall that the Quest Times had reported that although the US government sent a congratulatory message to Tinubu days after the INEC announcement, some civic groups had berated the US government, saying it “hurriedly congratulated Tinubu despite his fraudulent victory, because the US plans to use him as a stooge for the next four years.”
Also, on March 8, Chatham House, an independent policy institute based in London, in an analysis by one of its fellows, said the February 25 presidential election showed that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) failed to learn new lessons.
The London-based institute had stressed that the electoral umpire failed to adhere to its own guidelines, which it enunciated before the poll, especially the one bordering on the uploading of results in real-time.
“The INEC’s performance and controversies over these results mean that the electoral reforms and lessons declared to have been learned were not fully applied and, as an electoral body, it was significantly less prepared than it claimed.
“The logistical failures of INEC and widespread delayed opening of polling units meant that voters who showed up at the polls early were frustrated and many voters and INEC staff were not able to locate their polling units for several hours,” Chatham House had stated.
The commission’s patchy deployment of technology in the use of a Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), Chatham House added, is still being intensely scrutinized and criticized.