In the coming week, Nigeria holds presidential elections.

The invasion of Ukraine reaches its one-year anniversary,

and the Biden administration faces repercussions for new asylum restrictions.

It's February 23, 2003 in time for the world next week. I'm Bob McMahon.

And I'm Carly and Robbins.

So, Bob, let's start with Nigeria.

This weekend, Nigerians head to the polls to choose a new president.

You know, they're an extraordinary, at least for us, 18 candidates, and this is the first time since 1999, that there's no incumbent running and no military leader running.

How big a good choice in the Nigerians facing?

It's quite a big one.

And first, in reference to the scale you mentioned, I think it is worth noting that if it wasn't for certain other global

events overshadowing this, this could be getting a lot more attention. This presidential election,

we're talking about one of the largest electoral events on the planet this year that's taking

place in Nigeria. This is a country of 220 million people, which has growth trajectory

that could be tripled that by the end of this

century. In addition to being the most populous country in Africa has been its biggest economy,

but it is also an enormous problem. It's got extremely high poverty rates. It's got massive

corruption. It has the Boko Haram insurgency in the north, which continues to be extremely

lethal and all sorts of interconnected issues as well. There is a sense that, you know,

while there's been some new interest in the election and we'll get into the candidates in the

second, Carla, there's also concern that, you know, we could see just a return to sort of the same old, same old guard getting elected into office with the same patronage and same problems that the country's been dealing with in its post-1999 era, which is the democracy era of Nigeria.

We should say that it's coming at the end of two terms from Mohamedu Buhari, former military leader,

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