Nigerians have received with mixed feelings the news of a statement by President Joe Biden to send a US delegation to attend the swearing-in ceremony of Nigeran’s President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu on the 29 of May 2023 at the Eagle Square in Abuja, the Nation’s capital.
The ruling All Progressives Congress’ (APC) Candidate, Mr Tinubu emerged winner at the February polls to defeat his closest contenders, Alh Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour Party’s (LP) Peter Obi, who scored the highest number of votes respectively after Tinubu and APC.
However, the historic ceremony that should see a transition from an outgoing and an incoming APC governments will be unfolding amidst legal wrangling at the Presidential Elections Petition Tribunal where the duo opposition parties are challenging the legitimacy of the results that gave victory to the APC.
Some PDP and LP supporters and party leaders had hoped that, as a leading democracy in the world, the US should not accept the legitimacy of the results announced by Nigeria’s electoral umpire, INEC, which the two leading opposition parties accused of rigging them off the ballots.
But the President Biden’s nine-person delegation, headed by the United States Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Marcia L. Fudge will dash the hopes of the opposition in a US support for their cause.
On the contrary, members of the ruling APC have applauded the gesture by the US president, describing it as right political move considering the long diplomatic ties between the two countries.
Following the February presidential and subsequently March gubernatorial elections in Nigeria, the US has been careful in taking the political decision, to either throw its weight behind the APC’s victory or to align with the opposition in their bid to win back the mantle from hands of the APC.
The statement from the White House has now unequivocally shown the direction of the US and Biden’s administration with regards to future diplomatic relations with the incoming Tinubu’s administration.
