Two Nigerian columnists draw election lessons from US midterms

Two Nigerian columnists have taken this week's United States midterm elections as a lesson for Nigeria, though they drew very different conclusions.

In the US vote, Democrats won control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, according to results reported by the Associated Press. President Donald Trump remains in the White House.

One columnist, writing in BusinessDay, argued that Nigerians should be able to change their senators and representatives halfway through a president's term. The other, writing in ThisDay, focused on how the US moved ballots on time, and asked whether Nigeria's electoral commission can do the same.

The case for a Nigerian midterm

The BusinessDay writer said he had shared his proposal with two of the three senators from his home state, Abia: Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe and Senator Austin Akobundu. He asked them to raise it in the National Assembly.

He said Senator Abaribe replied that the idea might have come too late for the current constitutional review but could be raised in the next session.

His proposal: move House of Representatives elections to the midpoint of the presidential term, with members still serving four years, and leave the Senate on the presidential cycle for now. He suggested one transitional two-year House term, announced before anyone stands, and said no sitting member should get an extension.

He pointed to the scale of the Republican loss in the US. The AP reported that Democrats took at least seven Republican-held Senate seats, including Texas, Kansas and South Carolina, and flipped more than two dozen House districts, some of which backed Trump by double digits two years earlier.

He also cited campaign filings examined by The Washington Post showing Elon Musk put about $446 million of his own money into the midterm cycle, mostly to keep Congress in Republican hands. Money could not buy voters' obedience in Texas or Kansas, he wrote.

Nigeria borrowed much of its presidential system from the US in 1979 and kept its central features in the 1999 Constitution, as amended, he noted. Both countries elect a president and two legislative chambers, but on different timetables.

Getting the votes home

The second columnist, who runs a firm advising businesses and diplomatic missions in Washington, D.C., wrote that Nigeria's electoral problems have outlasted repeated renamings of its election body, from FEC to FEDECO, NEC, NECON and now INEC, the Independent National Electoral Commission.

He said Nigeria has more than 176,000 polling units and INEC plans to deploy about 1.4 million ad hoc staff for the next general election.

He noted that INEC chairman Professor Joash Amupitan inaugurated an Electoral Logistics Committee for the 2027 elections in October and said no Nigerian should be disenfranchised because materials arrived late.

From the US, he described how Los Angeles County used eight Sheriff's Department helicopters to fly sealed ballot containers from places like Lancaster, Palmdale and Van Nuys to a central processing facility. He said ballots are sealed and recorded before they move, with container numbers checked on arrival.

He also cited Maui County in Hawaii using charter flights, Coconino County in Arizona using mule trains from the Havasupai village in the Grand Canyon, and Erie County in Ohio working with the Sheriff's Office and the US Coast Guard to bring ballots from Kelleys Island.

His caution: in Nigeria, security agencies handling election materials will always raise questions of neutrality. INEC officials must stay responsible for the materials, and party agents and observers should witness handovers.

He said INEC's own review of the 2023 general election flagged transport, procurement, reverse logistics and security as weak points, and that European Union observers listed late deployment among the problems. He called for written agreements, transport matched to terrain, a standard chain-of-custody record and public post-election review.

Both writers agree on one thing: the US vote is worth studying. They disagree on what Nigeria should copy first.