The results for the recently concluded parliamentary elections has been heralded as mostly free and fair. The turn out was massive and people felt a sense of satisfaction as it felt like their votes counted for the first time.
The most important achievement to me was the fact that the ruling party’s super majority in parliament has been significantly reduced. Some still trump the fact that they still performed better than the other parties combined and see it as an endorsement by the Nigerian people. Far from it, and this is were numbers come into play.
In the last House of Reps PDP had 77% of the sits out of 360. That is about 277sits. With only results for 234 sits declared it is highly unlikely that they will ever get up to 277 sits again even if they win all the remainder of sits. This highlights the remarkable achievements of the other parties especially AC and CPC. AC for example increased their percentage from a mere 7% to 20% of sits in the house and from 6% to 18% in the Senate. CPC on the other hand went from having nothing to 13% in the House and from 1 to 7% in the Senate. These are remarkable feats considering the massive structure and financial muscle of the PDP. Scroll downtown see below breakdown of the results.
Whilst a lot of people might have been disappointed that PDP still have control of the House, I still wish to view this as a case half full rather than half empty. This could only mean either of two things. The party in power feels more pressure to perform and as such will view their win as a privilege rather than as a right. And if they don’t perform, be rest assured that the next election will be worse for them. Either way the Nigerian people stand to Gain.
HO– USE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Number of Percentage of Outgoing
seats won those declared parliament (%)
PDP 123 53 77
CPC 30 13 –
ACN 47 20 7
ANPP 25 11 15
APGA 6 3 one seat
Labour two seats
Other 3 1 one seat
Number of constituencies declared: 234
* No voting took place in 48 of the 360 House of
Representatives constituencies because of organisational delays.
SENATE
Number of Percentage of Outgoing
seats won those declared parliament (%)
PDP 45 63 85
CPC 5 7 1
ACN 13 18 6
ANPP 7 10 7
APGA 1 1 –
Labour –
Other 1 1 –
Number of constituencies declared: 72
* No voting took place in 15 of the 109 Senate constituencies
because of organisational delays.
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