Within seven years of the country's independence in 1960, when the chiefly Muslim Northern Protectorate hastily merged with the chiefly Christian Southern Protectorate to form “Nigeria,” ethnic strife over control of Nigerian oil led to a three-year civil war to keep “Biafra,” a secessionist state in the southeast, from splitting. The resulting growth of the Nigerian military in political affairs proved more enduring than Biafran separatism.

At the national level, the northern Hausa-Fulani group competes with the southwestern Yoruba and the southeastern Igbo for power, while each of those ethnic groups, in turn, faces opposition from minorities at regional levels of government. That includes Jonathan's own Ijaw group, which is concentrated in the oil-rich but impoverished southeastern Niger Delta. A Buhari administration would have to move fast to reassure leading Ijaw figures, who stand to lose more than anyone in the winner-takes-all nature of Nigerian general elections. Even though it's the center of the oil industry, the Niger Delta hosts a hodgepodge of violent, anti-Abuja, quasi-secessionist militias, many of which continue to operate despite Jonathan's rise to power.

Although the election appears, at first glance, like a Hobson's choice between corrupt incompetence and pious dictatorship, there are reasons to believe that there's a path for Nigeria to survive its 2015 election—and to emerge with its democracy not only intact, but strengthened.

Kevin Lees is the editor of Suffragio and is an investment attorney in Washington, D.C.

Image: Wikimedia/Department of State