By Charles Onyango-Obbo

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On March 1, Nigeria's ruling party candidate Bola Tinubu was declared the winner of the contentious February 25 presidential election.

Tinubu, 70, torchbearer for the All Progressives Congress (APC) party, won 8.8 million votes against 6.9 million for opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate Atiku Abubakar and 6.1 million for fresh-faced insurgent Labour Party's Peter Obi.

The wealthy power broker, businessman, former Lagos state governor, and crook to some will take over from President Muhammadu Buhari, who is stepping down after the two terms allowed by the constitution.

It was a typical African election, marred by the incompetence of the electoral commission, cheating (both real and imagined), violence, and everything in between. The losing parties rejected the result.

PDP's Abubakar, a 76-year-old businessman and former vice-president, lost his sixth attempt at the presidency. It isn't for everyone to keep going at it and lose that many times. Politicians like Abubakar deserve a salute.

Most-losing hopeful

In East Africa, the title of the most-losing presidential hopeful who didn't give up belongs to 78-year-old former Kenyan prime minister Raila Odinga. Last August, he lost his fifth stab at the top job.

Following him closely is Ugandan medical doctor, former guerrilla and leader of the Forum for Democratic Change, Dr Kizza Besigye, who ran four times against Uganda's eternal President Yoweri Museveni, who has been in office for 37 years now. He lost the count on all four occasions.

Tanzanian opposition leaders don't have the durability of their Kenyan and Ugandan counterparts, but they have offered a lot of ironies. Chadema's Freeman Mbowe wasn't always a free man, despite his name. In July 2021, he was arrested, along with 10 other members of the party and accused of terrorism. Prosecutors dropped the terrorism case against him in March 2022.

The Kenya-Uganda stretch holds many records for the opposition. Three years ago, the news spread like wild fire on social media and the press that Besigye had been named the most arrested man in the world by the Guinness Book of Records, when he was thrown behind bars for about the 50th time. It was fake news, but only for two reasons. First, the Guinness Book of Records had yet to do such a thing. Second as was widely reported then, the honour belonged to Australian man Tommy Johns. By 1988, he had been arrested almost 3,000 times for being drunk and disorderly.

Besigye, however, would win the prize if the score was narrowed down to the most arrested presidential challenger.

Longest time in jail

Raila, on the other hand, tops the roll for having spent the longest time in jail, although it wasn't as a presidential challenger. He was first arrested in late 1982 and charged with treason after being accused of being one of the masterminds of the failed coup earlier in August.

He was released six years later, in February 1988, but arrested and thrown in jail again in August of the same year, to be released in June 1989.

He was rearrested in July 1990, along with other pro-democracy and human-rights activists at the height of the battle against the Kenyan one-party state. He was finally released on June 21, 1991.

It is remarkable to think that Raila's political problems and Abubakar's quest for the Nigerian presidency are older than Eritrea's independence.

Besigye, 66, and therefore a child compared to Raila, was arrested and beaten for eyeing the State House nearly 10 years before South Sudan became independent in 2011.

Are these men heroes or martyrs?

A hero is defined as "a person who is admired for their courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities."

A martyr is "a person who is killed because of their religious or other beliefs."

Still around

They are all still around, so they are not martyrs in the classical sense of the word. Perhaps they are near heroes. They are courageous, alright, but it would be extravagant to speak of their noble qualities. That leaves outstanding achievements as a good measure of their works.

The argument has been made that people like Abubakar, Raila, Besigye, Mbowe, and the rest of the failed presidential candidates club help entrench democracy by offering themselves — even if to lose, because a competitive election is a precious political good in of itself. That when elections take place, even if the outcome is fraudulent, it entrenches the idea that a people's mandate is necessary for anyone to lead a country.

In the case of Raila, the challenges he made against the election outcomes, one of which was ground-breaking in being the first successful one in Africa, led to the perfection of both the election system and bought public faith in the 2010 Constitution.

Despite anger at election theft, it is not all in vain. Even the leaders who rig elections help make the important case that they are worthwhile enough to go to great lengths to steal. In the same way, there is great value in watching what many times is clearly a futile but incredibly brave and painful opposition quest to unseat an entrenched strongman through the ballot box.

It makes the point, to paraphrase Mahatma Gandhi, that democracy might not be worth killing for but is worth dying for.

Democratic advance, therefore, needs people like Besigye and Abubakar to run many times for the presidency and fail. By losing, it also means we never get to see them win power and fail as presidents, like many promising opposition figures have done.

So, here is a toast to our long-suffering election losers.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer, and curator of the "Wall of Great Africans". Twitter@cobbo3