The 1999 presidential election ended sixteen years of military rule in Nigeria. On 27 February 1999, voters chose Olusegun Obasanjo of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) over Olu Falae, the joint candidate of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) and the All People’s Party (APP). Three months later, on 29 May 1999, General Abdulsalami Abubakar handed power to the new civilian government, and the Fourth Republic began.

Background: from Abacha to a hurried transition

The election came quickly. General Sani Abacha died suddenly in June 1998, and his successor, Abdulsalami Abubakar, promised to return power to civilians within a year. A new electoral body, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), was created in August 1998 under Justice Ephraim Akpata. In less than nine months it registered voters, approved parties and ran local government, state, National Assembly and presidential elections.

Only three parties qualified to field candidates nationally: the PDP, the APP and the AD. The AD was strongest in the South-West, where many voters were still angry about the annulment of the 12 June 1993 election won by M.K.O. Abiola. The AD and the APP agreed to back a single candidate, Falae, rather than split the opposition vote.

The candidates

Olusegun Obasanjo had ruled Nigeria as a military head of state from 1976 to 1979 and handed over to an elected government, which gave him standing at home and abroad. He had been jailed by Abacha over an alleged coup plot and was released after Abacha’s death. The PDP, a broad coalition of politicians from every region, chose him as its candidate.

Olu Falae, an economist and former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, was a fellow Yoruba from the South-West. That made the contest unusual: both major candidates came from the same region, a deliberate attempt by the political class to reassure the South-West after 1993.

The result

INEC declared Obasanjo the winner with 18,738,154 votes (62.78%) against Falae’s 11,110,287 votes (37.22%). Out of 57.9 million registered voters, roughly 52% voted. Obasanjo won most states in the North, the South-East and the South-South. Falae carried the South-West, including his opponent’s home state.

Candidate Party Votes Share
Olusegun Obasanjo PDP 18,738,154 62.78%
Olu Falae AD–APP 11,110,287 37.22%

What observers said

Observers welcomed the return to civilian rule, but many questioned how clean the vote was. Former US President Jimmy Carter, who led a joint Carter Center and National Democratic Institute mission, called the process seriously flawed. In Bayelsa State, for example, his team saw about one in five registered voters cast a ballot, yet official returns showed 75% turnout. Observers also saw stacks of ballots marked with the same fingerprint and tally sheets replaced after voting. Carter said it was not possible to make an accurate judgment about the outcome, and he did not congratulate Obasanjo, a long-time friend. He did express confidence that the military would hand over power as promised.

Falae rejected the result and complained of rigging. In the end he did not pursue the case to a final judgment. He said years later that he had chosen not to hold up the return to democracy.

Many of the problems seen in later Nigerian elections were already present in 1999: inflated turnout figures in some states, weak voter registers and very little time to prepare.

Why 1999 still matters

The 1999 election set patterns that lasted. The PDP became the dominant party for the next sixteen years. The vote also fixed 29 May as the date of every handover since then, and it began the longest unbroken period of civilian rule in Nigeria’s history.

It also shaped the debate about zoning. Many in the political class saw power shifting to the South in 1999 as a way to heal the wounds of 1993, and the idea that the presidency should rotate between North and South has influenced every party’s choice of candidate since.

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