By BOLA BOLAWOLE
Our people are fond of comparing notes, especially concerning things that work perfectly elsewhere – so it seems or so we think – against similar things that walk upside down here, like Fela crooned in his album and title track “Upside Down” (1976). We did not waste time to compare elections in “small” Ghana (population: approximately 36 million) with our own elections here (the “Giant of Africa”; population: approximately 245 million, notwithstanding that the majority is impoverished and, as such, a liability instead of being an asset).
We groaned over how small Ghana was able to conduct free and fair elections in December 2024 without hiccups and with a fraction of the humongous amounts elections gulp here, at the end of which they still end up in acrimony. If small Ghana can do it, why not us? Afterall, conducting credible elections is not rocket science, as they say!
Similarly, when behemoth India (population: approximately 1.5 billion) held its own elections and everything went smoothly and election results were announced within hours, we moaned that if India, massive in size and population, can pull that off, why not us with our more manageable size and population? I read that the Indian electoral commission spent a huge sum of money to set up a polling station in one end-of-the-world location for just one person to exercise his voting rights! Organising elections does not translate into re-inventing the wheel; does it?
The latest elections that have gingered our people to start comparing notes again are those held in Brazil (population: approximately 215 million). If size is why elections are difficult to handle here, Brazil’s land area is almost 10 times larger than Nigeria. Two Brazilian states (Amazonas and Para) are each even larger than Nigeria!
Let’s take a look at a post forwarded to me on the election in Brazil. It runs thus: “Brazil held its presidential election on 4th October, 2026. Three hours after the voting time, the results were already out. Incumbent President Lula da Silva scored 45.16% (53.7m votes) while his challenger Flávio Bolsonaro scored 47.03% (56.1m votes). Neither met the constitutional requirement of over 50% to be declared outright winner, so they will go for a run-off on October 25th…
“The election was 100% electronic. They have used electronic voting machines since 1996 with biometric verification. No paper ballot boxes. No manual collation. No INEC chairman read out manual results state-by-state for three days. Results were transmitted directly to the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) and (were) published online.
“Voting is compulsory, turnout (was) over 79%. Yet, no report of ballot snatching, no BVAS failure, no INEC server glitch. Not a single report of election violence. Not one. And funny enough, Brazil is still classified as a ‘developing country’… It is about leadership and systems, not population size.”
The post got me thinking. Is it only about leadership and systems? I suspected it could be more than those two; so I began to ask questions online.
One was to compare Brazil’s literacy level with Nigeria’s: Brazil has a significantly higher adult literacy rate of approximately 94.5% to 94.8%, compared to Nigeria’s adult literacy rate of approximately 62% to 69%. Brazil’s literacy rate is roughly 25 to 30 percentage points higher than Nigeria’s.
Factors contributing to this include: Brazil’s basic education system is universally compulsory and heavily subsidized by the government, whereas Nigeria faces higher rates of out-of-school children and lower public education funding. Brazil expanded access through decades of infrastructure growth and public investment in late 20th-century urban development while Nigeria continues to grapple with regional educational divides (e.g., northern versus southern states)”.
So, think of the impact of high/low literacy level and impressive/decrepit infrastructural development on credible elections.
Again, I asked about the impact of the high incidence of poverty on credible elections: “Nigeria’s poverty rate is significantly higher than Brazil’s, with roughly 40% to 46% of Nigerians living below the national or international poverty line, compared to about 23.4% in Brazil under updated World Bank metrics. Using a higher $3.65/day international lower-middle-income benchmark, the Nigerian rate reaches over 70% whereas only approximately 23.4% of the Brazilian population is classified as poor following World Bank methodology updates.
Under lower extreme or specific international lines, Brazil’s rate is much smaller (around 4% to 9% depending on the specific bracket), though socioeconomic disparities persist. In economic context, Brazil is classified as an upper-middle-income economy with a higher GDP per capita (PPP roughly $22,338) and established social safety nets like Bolsa Família while Nigeria is a lower-middle-income economy with a lower GDP per capita (PPP roughly $9,087) and high rates of rural poverty (exceeding 52%).
Nigeria Multidimensional Poverty Rate is even more frightening. According to the 2026 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Nigeria’s multidimensional poverty rate stands at 38.7% (representing about 90.1 million people). Nigeria’s own earlier Multidimensional Poverty Index reported higher local figures around 63%. In contrast, Brazil’s Multidimensional Poverty Rate is significantly lower, with its traditional/monetary poverty rate hovering around 26.2% (World Bank baseline), extreme poverty down to 3.5%, and an overall multidimensional rate that is substantially lower than Nigeria’s (with Brazil scoring much higher in basic needs access like 100% electricity and 99% clean drinking water).
So, consider the impact of grinding poverty on credible elections. A higher number of Brazilians will be less likely to sell their votes for peanuts like their Nigerian counterparts.
I then asked to compare the prevalence of corruption in Nigeria and Brazil; this is what I got: “Transparency International ranks Nigeria as having a higher level of public sector corruption than Brazil, though both nations face deep-seated systemic graft, invoice-padding on mega-infrastructure projects, and economic inequality. Nigeria ranked 142nd out of 182 countries in the 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index with a score of 26 out of 100 while Brazil: Ranked 107th out of 182 countries with a score of 35 out of 100, indicating a cleaner public sector perception relative to Nigeria…
Both countries suffer from inflated construction costs and padded invoices, visible in large-scale public works like stadiums or major coastal highways… Both suffer from informal norms that undermine public resources—referred to colloquially as the “Nigerian factor” or the “Brazilian way”—which include minor bribery, tax evasion, and queue-jumping… Both face structural entanglement between political offices, organized crime, or drug trafficking networks that weaken state institutions.
However, note this important difference: “Brazil scores significantly higher on legal and administrative metrics, such as the Rule of Law Index (approx. 37.9% compared to Nigeria’s 21.3%), providing a stronger (though still flawed) framework for prosecuting high-level corruption…. Brazil’s judicial and investigative apparatuses… frequently target high-ranking corporate executives and political figures, whereas high-level accountability remains slower and less predictable in Nigeria, despite record numbers of lower-level cybercrime convictions by agencies like the EFCC.”
I then asked to evaluate the percentage of Nigerians vis-a-vis Brazilians who play by the rules: “When evaluating the percentage of citizens who ‘play by the rules’, macro-level studies analyzing governance, civic honesty, and adherence to regulations do not provide a single flat percentage. Instead, global indices measure this concept using multi-indicator metrics on a scale of 0 to 1 (or 0 to 100), where higher scores represent stronger adherence to the rules.
Based on global metrics, Brazilians statistically adhere more to legal frameworks and the rule of law than Nigerians, though both nations face deep institutional challenges. The World Justice Project (WJP) Rule of Law Index measures how laws are upheld and followed by both the government and ordinary citizens. It evaluates indicators like regulatory enforcement, absence of corruption, and criminal justice.
“Brazil ranks 83rd globally with an overall score of 0.49 out of 1.0. Brazilians show higher adherence to rules regarding political participation and civil liberties, though they struggle with institutional trust. Nigeria, in contrast, ranks 120th out of 142 countries with an overall score of 0.40 out of 1.0. While Nigeria has recently seen incremental improvements in its score, it continues to rank near the bottom globally in terms of overall regulatory enforcement and criminal justice system…
“Societal rule-following is heavily influenced by how people view the system. When citizens feel the system is rigged, micro-corruption becomes common practice. Analysts often compare the “Nigerian Factor” with the Brazilian concept of “Jeitinho Brasileiro” (the Brazilian Way)—both colloquial terms for finding informal, rules-bending loopholes to get things done (e.g., evading minor taxes, jumping lines, or offering small bribes).
“According to the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, Brazil scores 40 out of 100 (where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean), meaning a moderate-to-high portion of the populace navigates rules informally while Nigeria scores 25 out of 100. Due to systemic inefficiencies, an overwhelming majority of Nigerians view public institutions as fundamentally corrupt, which lowers the public motivation to strictly ‘play by the rules’. For instance, Afrobarometer data highlights that only 24% of Nigerians believe the law is applied equally to everyone, severely undercutting the incentive for civic compliance.
“Ultimately, while the majority of everyday citizens in both countries try to live honestly, the data shows that Brazilians operate within a system where rules are significantly more formalized and enforced compared to Nigeria.”
Therefore, I am of the opinion that our elections suffer from a combination of leadership, followership, and structural problems. Systems alone will not cure it all!
*Bolawole ([email protected] 0807 552 5533), former Editor of PUNCH newspapers, Chairman of its Editorial Board and Deputy Editor-in-chief, was also the Managing Director/ Editor-in-chief of the Westerner newsmagazine. He writes the “ON THE LORD’S DAY” column in the Sunday Tribune and “TREASURES” column in the New Telegraph newspapers. He is also a public affairs analyst on radio and television.
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