Chimamamanda Ngozi Adichie speaks on the 2015 presidential election

The half of a yellow sun author stated, in an article titled
“Democracy, Deferred”, that the poll shift is a
flailing act of desperation from an incumbent
terrified of losing.
The postponement of the elections was
announced on Saturday, February 7, » by the
Chairman of the Independent National Electoral
Commission (INEC), Attahiru Jega.
Read Ms Adichie’s full article, published on The
Atlantic » , below:

Last week, Victor, a carpenter, came to my
Lagos home to fix a broken to chair. I asked him
whom he preferred as Nigeria’s next president:
the incumbent, Goodluck Jonathan, or his
challenger, Muhammadu Buhari.
“I don’t have a voter’s card, but if I did, I would
vote for somebody I don’t like,” he said. “I don’t
like Buhari. But Jonathan is not performing.”
Victor sounded like many people I know: utterly
unenthusiastic about the two major candidates in
our upcoming election.
Were Nigerians to vote on likeability alone,
Jonathan would win. He is mild-mannered and
genially unsophisticated, with a conventional
sense of humor. Buhari has a severe, ascetic air
about him, a rigid uprightness; it is easy to
imagine him in 1984, leading a military
government whose soldiers routinely beat up civil
servants. Neither candidate is articulate.
Jonathan is given to rambling; his unscripted
speeches leave listeners vaguely confused.
Buhari is thick-tongued, his words difficult to
decipher. In public appearances, he seems
uncomfortable not only with the melodrama of
campaigning but also with the very idea of it. To
be a democratic candidate is to implore and
persuade, and his demeanor suggests a man
who is not at ease with amiable consensus. Still,
he is no stranger to campaigns. This is his third
run as a presidential candidate; the last time, in
2011, he lost to Jonathan.
This time, Buhari’s prospects are better.
Jonathan is widely perceived as ineffectual, and
the clearest example, which has eclipsed his
entire presidency, is his response to Boko
Haram. Such a barbaric Islamist insurgency
would challenge any government. But while Boko
Haram bombed and butchered, Jonathan seemed
frozen in a confused, tone-deaf inaction.
Conflicting stories emerged of an ill-equipped
army, of a corrupt military leadership, of northern
elites sponsoring Boko Haram, and even of the
government itself sponsoring Boko Haram.
Jonathan floated to power, unprepared, on a
serendipitous cloud. He was a deputy governor of
Bayelsa state who became governor when his
corrupt boss was forced to quit.
Chosen as vice president because powerbrokers
considered him the most harmless option from
southern Nigeria, he became president when his
northern boss died in office. Nigerians gave him
their goodwill—he seemed refreshingly
unassuming—but there were powerful forces who
wanted him out, largely because he was a
southerner, and it was supposed to be the
north’s ‘turn’ to occupy the presidential office.
And so the provincial outsider suddenly thrust
onto the throne, blinking in the chaotic glare of
competing interests, surrounded by a small band
of sycophants, startled by the hostility of his
traducers, became paranoid. He was slow to act,
distrustful and diffident. His mildness came
across as cluelessness. His response to criticism
calcified to a single theme: His enemies were out
to get him.
When the Chibok girls were kidnapped, he and
his team seemed at first to believe that it was a
fraud organized by his enemies to embarrass
him. His politics of defensiveness made it
difficult to sell his genuine successes, such as
his focus on the long-neglected agricultural
sector and infrastructure projects. His
spokespeople alleged endless conspiracy
theories, compared him to Jesus Christ, and
generally kept him entombed in his own sense of
victimhood.
The Democracy Report
The delusions of Buhari’s spokespeople are
better packaged, and obviously free of
incumbency’s crippling weight. They blame
Jonathan for everything that is wrong with
Nigeria, even the most multifarious, ancient
knots. They dismiss re