Presidential Election, 25 February 2023

Presidential election, 25 February 2023  

In the lead-up to the 2023 Presidential election, Nigeria was hit by severe flooding, particularly in the South-South region. The disaster, driven by extreme rainfall and worsened by the release of water from the Lagdo Dam in Cameroon, continued until 18 November 2022 (Angalapu 2022). 

From early October the flooding inflicted heavy losses, affecting over 2.5 million people. Among them, 1.3 million were displaced, 2,407 injured, and 603 killed across 25 of the hardest-hit states (Angalapu 2022). In Benue State alone, nearly one million people across more than 300 communities were internally displaced, with reported deaths and the destruction of critical infrastructure including hospitals, bridges and telecommunication systems (Angalapu 2022). 

Impact on the electoral process  

Peter Obi, one of the presidential aspirants, suspended his presidential campaign on 20 October citing the floods as a greater priority and urged his competitors to follow suit – the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Atiku Abubakar and Bola Tinubu (African Daily News 2022,; Opinion Nigeria 2022). ­ 

Amid the devastation, some flood victims voiced concerns that they would be disenfranchised in the upcoming election, as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had not made provisions for replacing voter cards lost during the crisis (Obia 2023). 

Criticisms of INEC pointed out that the problem was to some extent foreseeable, with serious flooding ‘fast becoming an almost annual occurrence’ – but receiving less attention than other security threats: ‘it is clear that there is an expectation that the situation would get resolved before the elections [but] INEC’s management has not shared any plan to amend its preparations for the elections to deal with the floods’ (Blue Print 2022).  

Indeed, INEC’s Chairperson had spoken on flooding impacts on the electoral management body itself as recently as May, 2022, (CDD 2022; Suleiman 2022) and—before the October floods struck—had already raised the issue of voter cards. The latter was in connection with the fact that some parts of the country had become largely inaccessible – making floods one of the Commission’s main challenges (Blue Print 2022).  

Finally, some commentary linked resource conflicts and quality of governance back to climate change, making disenfranchisement risks and the legitimacy of the electoral result all the more urgent (Blue Print 2022).  

Voter turnout in the 2023 presidential election was markedly low at around 27 per cent (International IDEA n.d.; Ndujihe 2023). This marks a decline from the 2019 parliamentary election, when turnout was 32.14 per cent; and the previous presidential election (2015) at 43.65 per cent (International IDEA n.d.).  

Rather than blaming the floods, international observers faulted the Independent National Election Commission (INEC) for logistical failures, irregularities, and a lack of transparency (International IDEA 2023).