Economic turmoil weighs on Nigerians ahead high-stakes election

Kalu Vincent, a 43-year old trader living in Aba, Abia State, has decided to vote for the first time in his life. He says he now realises how important the President’s policy decisions are to his life.

Vincent is heading out to vote after severe struggles to keep his business at Ahia Ohuru, Ngwa Road, Aba afloat due to the cash scarcity and fuel crisis the country is grappling with.

According to him, since the cash crisis started in January, residents in Aba have been having difficulty making transactions. Digital payment adoption in Aba is shallow as nearly 99 percent of transactions are conducted strictly with cash.

“It has been a nightmare,” he says. He left his house at 6:40am on Thursday to go search for a Point of Sale (PoS) agent that would give him money to buy foodstuff he would need ahead of the elections. “We don’t know what will happen. Even though IPOB has assured us there will be no sit-at-home or election disruption, still we have to be prepared. But people are fired up to vote on Saturday.”

The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) announced recently that it had suspended its weekly sit-at-home order for the 2023 general elections.

The forced digital adoption means many more traders and individuals had to apply for a PoS terminal. However, to access cash through the banking or PoS agents requires parting with up to a 30 percent transaction fee – to get access N10,000, you would need to pay N3,000.

Notwithstanding the high fees, John Egbu, a real estate merchant in Aba, says PoS shops are parked out with people seeking to lay their hands on the new notes.

“Before you even find a PoS agent willing to sell the naira to you, it will take you hours of trekking,” Egbu said. With a determined look, he whips out his voter’s card from his wallet. “I have my PVC and I am going out to vote on Saturday.”

The biggest challenge is the constant network glitches that affect the transaction process. Victor Oyiridiya, another trader at the market, also complained that when transactions are declined, it takes more than the usual 24 hours or 48 hours to reverse it. In one instance, a transfer of N460,000 is yet to be reversed after three weeks.

“Going to the bank these days is like embarking on a frustrating journey. If you are fortunate to get there early, your queue number could be over 100. When you manage to gain access to the bank hall after waiting for many hours, you are told to wait because the network is very bad. When the network finally comes, you are told another story about how the transfer is not their fault and you should wait for more days,” Oyiridiya said.

The frequent transaction declines and network glitches have discouraged many merchants and traders from accepting transfers in Aba.

Oyiridiya, who turned 54 in December, says for the first time, she is realising that selecting who becomes the President is a very key decision to make. She has never voted before and is now considering voting on Saturday.

“The current administration has been a disaster. Not that we didn’t know it had been poor but we always thought it would not affect us much. But seeing the way our money has become almost useless, it has now dawned on us that going to elect the President is not a decision to be taken lightly,” she said.

Katherine Onyirimba, a 65-year-old trader who also lives in Aba, said she had voted once in 2011 but stayed away in subsequent elections. She would love to vote again on Saturday but she is suspicious of the security situation in the town.

“They (IPOB) might just declare sit-at-home and decide to attack anyone that does not comply. But there is no doubt we have to vote for the next President. What happens in Abuja affects us all,” she said.

According to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), there are 93.46 million voters registered to vote on Saturday. The voters are divided by their regions. The North-Central has 15.3 million voters; North-East, 12.54 million; North-West, 22,25 million; South-East, 10.90 million; South-South, 14.44 million; and South-West, 17.9 million.

Vincent and Oyiridiya were among the millions of voters in the South-East who made it a point to shun previous elections. In 2019, the region had the most negligible voter turnout, with the latest Stears report noting that voters in the South-East are the least satisfied with Nigeria today. Sixty-seven percent say the country is going in the wrong direction, according to the report.

The cash crisis, however, is widespread and many semi-urban and rural cities are the most affected because of the low concentration of telecom infrastructure and by extension digital payment infrastructure. This is largely behind the violent protests that have been witnessed in different parts of the country.

“In the UK, we register to vote online; they send the card to your house. Nigeria has a long way to go. We have done NIN; a lot of people have passports, driver’s licence, and bank accounts. Why is it so hard to aggregate this data for voter registration? So we can decongest the queue,” said Toyyib Adewale Adelodun, a personal development coach and investor.

In Lagos, the commercial capital of Nigeria, where digital adoption is high, residents are still queuing up at bank branches due to network glitches that stop transfers from being completed. The growing transaction declines have led to more customers trooping to banks to withdraw over the counter.

“Banks are not giving more than N5,000 and their mobile apps hardly work all the time now. You have to try and try before it will work,” said Okunnu James, a 50-year-old painter. He did not vote in 2019 because, according to him, there was no credible presidential candidate he could vote for. He is going out on Saturday to vote because he now has a credible candidate with “character, competence, and capacity.”

Ogunleye Abayomi, a bank customer, said he spent four hours on a queue at a bank only to get into the hall and be informed that the bank servers were down.

But elections in Nigeria have witnessed low voter turnout over the years for different reasons, including growing insecurity, misgovernance, and economic decline. Voter turnout across Nigeria hovered around 30 to 35 percent of registered voters in the last two electoral cycles, according to INEC.

“One of Nigeria’s biggest challenges is voter turnout for presidential elections – since 1979, it has never exceeded 57 percent (excluding 2003),” Global Citizen Africa said in a statement.

Nonetheless, many analysts say 2023 might be different due to the large voter registration the electoral umpire recorded. Over 12.2 million new voters were recorded, setting a new record for INEC and a buzz that more Nigerians are politically aware of the implications of not voting.