Santiago Stocker serves as the Resident Program Director for Nigeria and the Director of the International Electoral Observation Mission for the 2023 Nigeria presidential and legislative elections.
Before joining IRI, Santiago served as a Director in the State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations (CSO), where he founded the Office of Advanced Analytics and produced award-winning analysis on conflict, terrorism, democracy, elections, and complex negotiations.
In addition to leading conflict analytics at the State Department, Santiago conducted field work in multiple conflict and crisis zones in Sub-Saharan Africa, including Cameroon, Ethiopia, and Nigeria.
Santiago is a certified Superforecaster with the Good Judgement Project and was ranked number 2 on the Intelligence Community’s classified prediction market, beating 1,500 of the U.S. government’s best analysts.
– Says; Igbos in Nigeria, 73% says sometimes or always, are treated unfairly by the government.
– Says; This is the highest rate of any ethnic group surveyed in Africa.
– Says; In their (Igbo) view, they are sometimes always being treated unfairly by the government.
– Says; Igbos feel disconnect from the government and that needs to be addressed.
– Says; The grievance is that you have a very product region that’s exporting not just to Nigeria, but internationally. You have I think, Imo and Anambra, are number 4 and 6 for GDP in Nigeria in 2021, which was a very violent Year, even in the midst of the violence, three of the five South East states were in the top 12 for GDP per Capita, yet there’s no Seaport, the bridges are not good, the roads are not good.
– Says; The unrest is an infrastructural thing though with political lenses.