A Critical Appraisal of the Management of 2011 General Elections and Implications for Nigeria’s Future Democratic Development

Abstract

Election management has been a critical issue in Nigeria’s political history since independence, leading to the abortion of several attempts at democratic governance before 1999. Various abuses of the electoral process had been recorded in the seven general elections held before the 2011 elections. The paper evaluates the efficiency of the election management body, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in terms of preparations for the election, ability of INEC to ensure compliance to electoral laws by political parties and actors, and the level of synergy between INEC, security agencies and other institutions. The paper adopted system theory and decision making approach as theoretical constructs. The two approaches were used as platform for a content analysis of the secondary data comprising of relevant published books, scholarly journal articles, newspaper articles, conference and institutional papers, as well as materials downloaded from the internet. The paper argues that when compared with the past elections, the 2011 elections were relatively credible, free and fair. However, several shortcomings were identified including, inefficiency in the preparation for elections on the part of INEC, undemocratic imposition of candidates by all the leading political parties, and various security lapses during and after the elections. The paper concludes that INEC leadership must tackle the identified lapses, including carrying out a complete re-organization of the commission to make it more efficient, ensure strict adherence to the electoral law by all political parties and put in place security measures that deter threats.