As is well known, at the end of last month, retired General Muhammadu Buhari defeated incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan in Nigeria’s Presidential elections. A northerner and a Muslim, Buhari won a majority of the votes in predominantly Christian states in the south-west of the country, as well as mainly Muslim states in the north. Jonathan won states in the south-east and central-east regions of the country. (Unlike South Africa, Nigeria has direct elections for President.)

Nigeria is a federation, and the state governors wield considerable power and control significant budgets. Some Nigerian state budgets are bigger than the national budgets of some other African countries. And elections for state governors followed two weeks after the Presidential elections. In these, Buhari’s party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), won 19 of the 28 governorships, including three in the south-west (one of which was Lagos), while Jonathan’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) won nine states (including one in the north-east). Seven states did not hold elections, while in one state, Imo, supplementary elections have been ordered in a number of voting districts in which irregularities were detected. However, it is noteworthy that the APC did not win a single one of the country’s five oil-producing states. These were retained by the PDP.

The elections had been postponed for six weeks because of recent offensives by islamist (or, if you prefer, jihadi) group Boko Haram, which, over the past couple of years, has moved from being a terrorist group to developing guerrilla capabilities and then to undertaking semiconventional military operations (while never abandoning terrorism). However, the past couple of months have seen successful counterattacks by the Nigerian and neighbouring militaries, retaking much (if not most) of the territory held by Boko Haram. (Even so, the movement’s ability to carry out terrorist attacks remains significant.) This cleared the way for the elections.

President-elect Buhari will take office on May 29. Outgoing President Jonathan has rightly been praised, across the world, for his immediate acceptance of the official results, phoning Buhari to concede and to congratulate the winner. PDP candidates had won every previous election since the restoration of democracy in the country in 1999. Thus, this election result marks a very important transition in the history of Nigeria: power is peacefully being transferred from a ruling party to a challenging party as a result of free and fair elections.

This sets a hugely important precedent. Although it does not guarantee future such democratic transitions, it makes them much more likely. Done once, it is easier to do a second time. And then a third, and so on. Even more strikingly, this transition is taking place against the background of what can fairly be described as the internal war against Boko Haram, plus insecurity in the Niger Delta region and often violent piracy in the Gulf of Guinea. All these factors only reinforce the significance and symbolic power of the transition.

Such a transition, from rulers to challengers, is the fundamental proof of democracy. No country that has not gone through this experience can be regarded as a properly maturing democracy, even if it has free and fair elections, civil liberties, political freedoms, an independent judiciary and all the other elements of democracy. As Zimbabwe proved, a sufficiently ruthless and entrenched regime (with, for example, the police and armed forces dominated by politically reliable and even personally loyal senior officers) can sweep these away with alarming ease, should elections go against it and it refuses to step down.

Unfortunately, from a South African point of view, this is now another area in which Nigeria has taken the lead from South Africa, after becoming the continent’s biggest economy last year, following a long overdue rebalancing of its gross domestic product (GDP). (There are South Africans who refuse to believe this, but the world does, making South African doubts look like sour grapes.) South Africa has not undergone such a power transition since its first fully democratic election in 1994. (Previous elections don’t really count, as they excluded the majority of the population.)

Thus, Nigerian ‘soft power’ (personally, I prefer the term ‘influence’) is growing as it sets an example to other emerging countries (and not just in Africa). But South Africa’s image is being badly damaged by yet another wave of xenophobic violence, targetting fellow Africans. Certainly, these attacks have shocked and angered people across the continent. They have definitely been noticed in Nigeria, with reports that citizens of that country have been murdered and that the South African government responded slowly to a growing crisis.

But, back to the economy. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), in its April 2015 ‘World Economic Outlook Update’, forecasts that sub-Saharan Africa will grow at 4.5% this year (a downward revision from previous forecasts of 1.25 percentage points), as against 5% last year. But, next year, the forecast is for 5.1% growth. The 2015/16 forecasts still amount to “solid growth” in the words of the update. However, for South Africa, growth this year is now predicted to be 2% (up from 1.5% last year; but growth in 2013 was 2.2%) and the forecast for next year is 2.1%. Nigeria, by contrast, is expected to grow at 4.8% this year (as against 6.8% in 2014) and at 5% in 2016. The country is, the IMF points out, adjusting to the fall in oil prices, which have cut the growth rate. In terms of current account balances, South Africa’s is expected to be –4.6% of GDP this year (down from –5.4% last year) and –4.7% next year, while Nigeria’s should be 0.7% this year (as against 2.2% in 2014), rising to 1.3% in 2016.

South Africa and Nigeria are both suffering from more than their fair share of woes. But one has the impression that Nigeria’s problems stem from dynamic growth (and reactions to it), while South Africa’s seem to result from relative stagnation and even decline.