Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 August 2021
In many respects, the least important part of the 1999 elections were the elections themselves. From the beginning of General Abdusalam Abubakar’s transition program in mid-1998, most Nigerians who were not part of the wealthy “political class” of elites—which is to say, most Nigerians— adopted their usual politically savvy perspective of siddon look (sit and look). They waited with cautious optimism to see what sort of new arrangement the military would allow the civilian politicians to struggle over, and what in turn the civilians would offer the public. No one had any illusions that anything but high-stakes bargaining within the military and the political class would determine the structures of power in the civilian government. Elections would influence this process to the extent that the crowd influences a soccer match.
1. Emphasis added. Many of the quotes in this piece derive from interviews done by the author and a team of reporters from the Guardian (Lagos) in 10 different locations across the country on February 20 and 27, 1999 on behalf of the Hoover Institution’s Africa Documentation Project at Stanford University. These and a wide range of interviews with key players in the 1999 Nigerian elections will soon be available for researchers through the library at Hoover.
2. Maja-Pearce, Adewale, From Khaki to Agbada (Lagos: Civil Liberties Organization, January 1999), 47 Google Scholar. The incidents in this paragraph and many other abuses are discussed at length in the CLO report.