The 2003 presidential election was the first organised by a civilian government in Nigeria since 1983, and it was a crucial test of whether the democracy restored in 1999 could renew itself. On 19 April 2003, President Olusegun Obasanjo of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was re-elected with almost 62% of the vote. His main challenger was a former military head of state, Muhammadu Buhari, of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP).
A crowded field
By 2003 the courts had opened the way for many more parties to register, and 20 candidates contested the presidency. The serious race was between Obasanjo and Buhari. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the former Biafran leader, ran for the new All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and drew strong support in the South-East.
Obasanjo ran on his first-term record, including the return to civilian rule, telecoms liberalisation and new anti-corruption agencies. Buhari ran on discipline and an anti-corruption platform. Each man’s support was concentrated in different regions: Obasanjo’s PDP was dominant in the South and the Middle Belt, while Buhari was strongest in the North-West and North-East.
The result
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), led by Abel Guobadia, announced the result on 23 April 2003.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Olusegun Obasanjo | PDP | 24,456,140 | 61.94% |
| Muhammadu Buhari | ANPP | 12,710,022 | 32.19% |
| Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu | APGA | 1,297,445 | 3.29% |
Official turnout was 69%, a figure many observers found hard to square with what they saw at polling stations. The PDP also won most governorship races held on the same day, including in the South-West, where the Alliance for Democracy held on only to Lagos.
Observers were divided
International observers disagreed about the vote. The European Union mission reported serious irregularities and fraud and identified problems in eleven states. It pointed to implausible turnout and results in parts of the South-South and South-East. The Commonwealth mission was more positive, saying that a genuine effort had been made to let people vote freely.
Human Rights Watch later documented at least 100 deaths in election-related violence in April and May 2003, mostly in the South and South-East. It concluded that the ruling party and its supporters committed most of the serious abuses, while opposition parties were also responsible for violence. The worst incidents were in Rivers State, Delta, Bayelsa, Ebonyi, Imo and Enugu.
Several of the 2003 abuses documented by observers, such as stolen result sheets, thugs controlling polling units and implausible turnout figures, returned on a larger scale in 2007.
The court challenge
Buhari and the ANPP rejected the result and went to court, arguing that the election had been rigged. The petition went all the way to the Supreme Court, which in 2005 upheld Obasanjo’s victory. The judges accepted that there had been irregularities in some places but found that they did not substantially affect the overall result. It was the first time a presidential election in the Fourth Republic was challenged to the highest court, and the case set the high bar that later petitioners also struggled to clear.
Why 2003 still matters
The 2003 election showed that Nigeria could hold a second election and transfer power within the same constitutional order, which many had doubted. It also confirmed patterns that would shape later elections: heavy regional voting, tension between ruling and opposition parties over INEC’s independence, and court petitions that rarely succeeded.
Buhari would run three more times before finally winning in 2015.
Read more on elect.ng
- Read the 2007 presidential election story, the election that followed.
- See the incident archive for 2003.
- Explore Nigeria’s leaders since 1999.
