PT State of the Race: Who wins Nigeria’s presidential election?

It is not the election week that Nigerians anticipated or that anyone foresaw. As the clock counts down to 25 February, normal pre-poll excitement about who may win has been overtaken by a not unreasonable fear, especially among Nigerians who were adults before the last of the military despots were ushered out in 1999, that the election may not even hold.

Over the past few weeks, violent protests in parts of the country over the scarcity of banknotes have overshadowed the campaign rallies. Citizens who turned in the old notes to their banks cannot get the new ones because the banks do not have them either. The scarcity of cash has brought misery upon many homes and businesses, with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund among those who have questioned the timing of the currency redesign exercise so close to crucial general elections.

An immediate political consequence of the crisis is a crack in the governing All Progressives Congress (APC). Three state…