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Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

The US Congress yesterday certified President-elect Donald Trump as the winner of the 2024 election in proceedings that unfolded without violence or mayhem, in stark contrast to the January 6, 2021, violence as his mob of supporters stormed the Capitol.

Lawmakers convened under heavy security and a snowstorm to meet the date required by law to certify the election, but the legacy of January 6 left an extraordinary fact: The candidate who tried to overturn the previous election won this time and is legitimately returning to power.

Layers of tall black fencing flanked the US Capitol complex in a stark reminder of what happened four years ago, when a defeated Trump sent his mob to “fight like hell” in what became the most gruesome attack on the seat of American democracy in 200 years. It was the tightest national security level possible, Associated Press (AP) reported.

Vice President Kamala Harris, presiding over proceedings as the role of the office, read the tally. The chamber broke into applause, first Republicans for Trump, then Democrats for Harris.

The whole process happened swiftly and without unrest. One by one, the state results were read aloud by the tellers as senators and representatives sat in seats in the House chamber. Vice President-elect JD Vance joined his former colleagues. Within half an hour the process was done, the AP stated.

Democrats frustrated by Trump’s 312-226 Electoral College victory nevertheless accepted the choice of the American voters. Even the winter snow blanketing the grounds didn’t interfere with January 6, the day set by law to certify the vote.

Trump said in a Monday post online that Congress was certifying a “great” election victory and called it “a big moment in history.”

The day’s return to a US tradition that launched the peaceful transfer of presidential power came with an asterisk as Trump prepared to take office in two weeks with a revived sense of authority.

He denied that he lost four years ago, mused about staying beyond the constitution’s two-term White House limit and promised to pardon some of the more than 1,250 people who had pleaded guilty or were convicted of crimes for the Capitol siege.

What’s unclear is if January 6, 2021, was the anomaly, the year Americans violently attacked their own government, or if this year’s expected calm becomes the outlier. The US is struggling to cope with its political and cultural differences at a time when democracy worldwide is threatened. Trump calls January 6, 2021, a “day of love.”

Biden, speaking Sunday at events at the White House, said:  “We’ve got to get back to the basic, normal transfer of power” . What Trump did last time, Biden said, “was a genuine threat to democracy. I’m hopeful we’re beyond that now,” he added.

Still, American democracy has proven to be resilient, and Congress, the branch of government closest to the people, was coming together to affirm the choice of Americans.

Harris presided over the counting, as is the requirement for the vice president, and certified her own defeat — much the way Democrat Al Gore did in 2001 and Republican Richard Nixon in 1961.

She stood at the dais where then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi was abruptly rushed to safety last time as the mob closed in and lawmakers fumbled to put on gas masks and flee, and shots rang out as police killed Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter trying to climb through a broken glass door toward the chamber.

The House chaplain, Margaret Kibben, who delivered a prayer during the mayhem four years ago, gave a simple request as the chamber opened to “shine your light in the darkness.”

There are new procedural rules in place in the aftermath of what happened four years ago, when Republicans parroting Trump’s lie that the election was fraudulent challenged the results their own states had certified.

Under changes to the Electoral Count Act, it now requires one-fifth of lawmakers, instead of just one in each chamber, to raise any objections to election results. With security as tight as it is for the Super Bowl or the Olympics, law enforcement was on high alert for intruders.