“I feared for my life”: votes, violence, and the endangerment of electoral officials in Nigerian elections

A major preventative approach adopted by the Nigerian state to forestall election-day violence is the increased deployment of state security agents, particularly, the Nigerian Police Force (NPF) to ensure the safety of voters, electoral materials and officials. But has the inordinate expansion of police presence in balloting spaces clamped down on violence? Part of a PhD study with 15 participants and empirical findings from Rivers State, Nigeria, are presented here to answer the above question. Using in-depth interviews and focus group discussions, data were elicited from electoral officials and independent electoral observers. The paper’s contribution is bi-dimensional. First, it adds to the empirical literature on electoral violence in Nigeria by analysing the outcomes of police deployment patterns in balloting spaces. The study finds that the lack of operational capacity and the politicisation of the NPF are mainly responsible for the police’s inability to guarantee the safety of voters and electoral officials. Second, the paper adds to the scholarship on democratically responsive policing. Utilising the NPF as case study, the findings demonstrate the explanatory power of the concept to capture the (un)democratic policing credentials of a given police service. The paper is relevant for understanding the challenges of policing elections in non-Western, illiberal quasi-democratic societies.

The study examined the effects of electoral violence on the democratization efforts and democratic consolidation in Nigeria since the beginning of the Fourth Republic in 1999. The nation’s elections, at all levels of governance, are characterized by violence. Violence mar as high as 70 percent of Nigerian elections resulting in deaths, destruction of properties, maiming, etc. Successive governments have made frantic efforts to institutionalize and consolidate democracy in the country, embarking on various electoral reforms with little or no result with respect to curbing electoral violence. Thus, the main objective of this study is to show that the high rate of electoral violence witnessed over the years has weakened and discredited the democratic consolidation drive of the Nigerian state. The theoretical framework adopted in this study is the “State Fragility Theory”. However, the author’s modified version of “State Compromise Theory” was used to analyze the nature, character and reasons for electoral violence in Nigeria and its effects on the institutionalization of democracy in the country. The study used both primary and secondary data. The primary data were mainly drawn from mainly the authors’ observations during elections, over the years, while secondary data were drawn from existing literature on the subject matter. The study revealed that the pervasive violence at different elections has greatly discredited and emasculated democratic governance in the country. Violence has become both physical and cathartic. It manifests in form of wanton shooting by political thugs to intimidate voters and electoral officials, so as to snatch election materials, disruption of voting, vote suppression, cancellation and annulment of elections in opposition strongholds, etc. The paper concluded that, to ensure the consolidation of democracy in Nigeria, election management bodies must adopt an electoral system that drastically reduces congregation of people at a voting point(s) so as to reduce violence. Some of the recommendations are that election management bodies should deploy appropriate technology to reduce congregation of people at a voting point, transmission of results should be done electronically to minimize human involvement, contacts error and manipulations.

As voting represents the peak of citizen engagement in politics, this article assessed electoral laws and guidelines, and how they influenced the voting participation of disabled people during Nigeria’s 2019 general elections. It relied on the qualitative and quantitative methods to source data from key participants, including disabled students at the Federal College of Education (Special) Oyo, Nigeria’s main training institution for disabled people. The data were subjected to descriptive statistics and contently analysed. The article revealed that beyond constitutional provisions guaranteeing equal participation of all, legislations such as the 2010 Electoral Act, where well implemented, positively influenced the voting participation of disabled people. However, challenges of braille ballot papers, transportation restriction, and stigmatization adversely affected their voting participation. The article offers recommendations for enhanced inclusion of disabled people and for closing the disability gap in future elections. Points of Interest The Electoral Act (as amended) provides opportunities for enhanced voting participation of disabled people during elections in Nigeria but majority of them are not aware of these provisions. The research found that the electoral officials did not follow all the provisions of the Electoral Act during the 2019 elections, and this affected the voting participation of many disabled people. Non-availability of brail ballot papers and sign language interpreter at the voting centers as well as restriction placed on mobility on the day of election restricted the participation of disabled people in the 2019 general elections in Nigeria. The study recommended an improvement in the implementation of the Electoral Act by the electoral officials to improve voting participation of disabled people in Nigeria. The study recommended that electoral reforms that include electronic voting system and transmission of results should be implemented and strengthened in subsequent elections in Nigeria.

Kenya and Nigeria have arguably Africa’s most boisterous media landscapes. Both countries also have similar sociocultural and sociopolitical milieus. Thus, in both countries the media’s effect on society, especially during the electoral process, is often identical. However, elections in Kenya and Nigeria, and indeed in most countries in Africa, are often based on ethnoreligious considerations rather than on sound political ideologies. Consequently, more often than not, elections have the propensity to disintegrate into violence. During the past two decades polls in Kenya and Nigeria have shown that the media plays a significant role in elections’ violent or non-violent turnout. This chapter examines the media’s role in electoral violence in Nigeria and Kenya. The focus is on the 2013 and 2018 general elections in Kenya and the 2011 and 2015 elections in Nigeria. Theoretically premised on the peace journalism model proposed by Jake Lynch and Annabel McGoldrick, the study provides practical insights into a journalism model that promotes peaceful elections and catalyses the transitional justice process.

Election offences manifest in all forms of malpractices such as rigging, thuggery, vote buying, often times culminating in violence. These offences had remained an albatross in the Nigerian electoral journeys from the colonial period through the first republic in 1960 till 1999 when Nigerians started witnessing an untruncated democratic journey in her electoral history. Nigeria’s elections have always been marred by electoral malpractices and violence thereby shortchanging the citizens’ will and mandate expressed during elections. The general aim of this paper is to evaluate the impact of electoral violence and malpractices on the outcome of elections in Nigeria while the specific objective is to determine the solutions to this malaise for a better democracy based on popular elections in the country. The paper adopts a theoretical, doctrinal and conceptual method of research and utilizes Nigeria’s electoral laws, court decisions, as well as legislations criminalizing electoral malpractice and violence so as to arrive at a balanced and objective analysis. The paper found, among other things, that the electoral violence, thuggery and other malpractices have not abated since the new democratic culture in 1999 till date as malpractices and violence have been widely reported in all the States of the Federation in virtually all the elections from Local Government Council to Presidential elections. It is worrisome, even as the courts have showed that elections in Nigerians are a very emotional and quarrelsome matter. It is a matter where Nigerians fight to finish. In spite of its enactment into the Nigerian Electoral Laws, malpractices and violence have not abated, but rather increased. The paper therefore recommends the setting up of Constitutional or Electoral Offences Court to try and punish perpetrators of election malpractices and violence. In addition, the legislature should strengthen the provisions relating to malpractices and violence in the Electoral Act in order to punish those who breach the law whether they are agents or principal actors without favoring any political party, religious, ethnic or any other biases.

Electoral processes in Nigeria have been plagued by various forms of violence since the country gained independence, and social media has not been exempted from these spikes in electoral violence. Hence, the need to ascertain the Perception of South-East residents on the influence of social media messages on electoral violence during the 2023 presidential election in Nigeria becomes inevitable. To conduct this study, the survey design was adopted. Questionnaire was used to generate data for the study. A sample size of 405 respondents were determined using the Modified Cochran formula from the population of 13,524,918 Internet/social media subscribers in South-East. The Multi-stage sampling technique was used. The findings, among others, revealed that social media messages, to a moderate extent, influenced electoral violence during the 2023 Nigerian presidential election. Also, it found that the majority of the respondents moderately perceived the influence of social media messages on electoral violence during the 2023 Nigerian presidential election. Based on these findings, the study recommends that INEC and other electoral bodies should educate the citizens that perceive social media content on electoral violence on how to fact-check information sources

This paper provides a new perspective on the institutional management implications of intensified electoral violence in Nigeria. There has been a growing recognition of the role of institutional management in organizational performance such as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Nigeria’s electoral umpire. Yet little is known among scholars about specific institutional management capacity of INEC as Nigeria’s 2023 general election was marred by violence. This paper explores such relationship, it seeks to understand the ways in which electoral violence has become a source of instability in Nigeria and why effective institutional management capacity is necessary. It argues that electoral violence such as chaos, arson, shooting of guns, carting away of ballot boxes etc, have made effective institutional management central to resolving such violence. The paper builds on institutional management theory and seminal qualitative data from the recent European Union Election Observer Mission (EUEOM), Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) and International Crisis Group (ICG), to explore the case of Independent National Electoral Commission of Nigeria (INEC)in relation to effective institutional management capacity in contexts characterized by electoral violence. Among others, the study demonstrates that institutional inefficiency and weak organizational capacity such as delay in uploading and transmitting electoral results into the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS)and poor operational capacity of INEC in timely collation of results account for electoral violence. Findings highlight a further management implication of institutional weakness, namely how it could breed ‘inefficiency’ in the electoral system and how such institutional weakness could shape the broader context of persistent electoral violence. Based on the findings, the paper specifically, advances two interrelated arguments. First, a new kind of electoral violence has emerged within Nigeria’s electoral system as a result of institutional weakness of INEC that has (a) increased the incidence and type of electoral fraud leading to crises in Nigeria and (b) the crises have persisted within systemic and complex contexts. Second, this electoral violence has further obscured the links between political actors and institutional efficiency outcomes in ways that make the institutional management capacity of INEC particularly challenging. In the alternative, the paper proposes strategies for effective management and institutional overhaul.

Recent elections in Nigeria have produced conflicting and ambiguous assessments regarding the quality, integrity and credibility of the country’s electoral governance. On one hand, widespread domestic and international criticisms of the farcical 2007 elections provoked remarkable constitutional, statutory, and administrative proposals, programmes, and policies for reforming Nigeria’s electoral processes. Those reforms led to electoral cycles that observers adjudged to be comparatively competitive, broadly acceptable, and generally indicative of a shift away from the country’s extended history of electoral maladministration, corruption, and chicanery. On the other hand, credible reports emphasize the persistence of significant levels of fraud, violence, and disorganization in Nigerian elections. This chapter shows that these contradictory outcomes and dual perspectives are consistent with the partial and incomplete nature of recent electoral reforms in Nigeria. Those reforms have extended the autonomy of the country’s election management commission, without guaranteeing the agency’s effective political insulation or addressing broader and deeper weaknesses in the country’s electoral landscape. Nigeria resembles a classic hybrid regime with increasingly competitive electoral contests that, however, continue to witness undemocratic levels of manipulation, corruption, and violence. More extensive reforms, along the lines proposed by a major official electoral reform committee, would have produced more substantial improvements in electoral integrity and quality.

Elections in Nigeria has been plagued by vote buying, ballot box snatching, weak and independent(but dependent on the Executive) electoral management body, corruption and legitimacy crises as well as other forms of election malpractice, violence and irregularities. To curb the incidences of fraud, malpractice and the flagrant absence of transparency, this study introduces the concept of the design and implementation of an online voting platform (OVP) for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). This application implemented with Python, a powerful web programming language suggests an impartial, electronic and easily managed form of conducting gubernatorial elections (in one of the states) in Nigeria. The database was created using MySQL. The analyses and design of the web application involved some unified modeling diagrams (case, class). The web application promises to eradicate several weakness of the existing system such as slower vote counting, physical location for conducting the gubernatorial polls, inconsistencies and errors resulting from the manual tasks, costliness of the election and most especially delay/ time wastage.

This study examined the determinants of voter behaviour in the 2015 gubernatorial elections in Nigeria with particular attention to Ebonyi State. The cardinal objective of the paper is to identify the factors affecting voter behaviour in recent times in Nigerian elections. Experimental survey design was adopted in the study. Data were elicited from both primary and secondary sources and was analyzed using content, percentage and Chi-square statistical tools. The paper revealed among the other things that gratification and party affiliations significantly influenced voter behaviour during the 2015 gubernatorial elections in Nigeria especially in Ebonyi State. It therefore recommends inter alia; that voters should be enlightened further by relevant agencies in Nigeria on the choice of candidate(s) based on party manifestoes, policy and programmes rather than heavy dependence on gratification. Implication of this finding for Nigerian citizenry is that it is only through voting of candidate in an election on the basis of lined-up policies and programmes that can bring about popular choice of candidate that would eventually deliver the democratic dividends to the citizenry.

Since the return to democracy in 1999, elections in Nigeria have been an integral component of the democratization process and a necessary exercise for good governance. However, in successive elections, the procedures and periods of electioneering have often been fraught with threats and risks of electoral violence, which has significantly contributed to undoing long and hard-fought democratic gains. Furthermore, incumbent leaders have been accused of using state power to intimidate opposition candidates and their support base, with election processes being abused by some African governments to impose undemocratic practices. This paper focuses on the role of the military in influencing elections in Nigeria. It uses the 2019 and 2023 general elections in Nigeria as case studies. This paper argues that using the military in elections not only lacks a constitutional basis but contributes to electoral violence, deaths and destruction of property.

Civic Engagement and its Role in Mitigating Electoral Violence in Nigeria: Implications for the 2015 General Elections

Elections in Nigeria have been characterized by high scale of electoral malpractices, money politics, electoral violence and the use of ethno-religious divide strategy by political elite in order to influence the majority votes, claimed and announced as authentic election winners, these phenomenon’s has dominate Nigerian electoral process since the return of democracy in Nigeria during 1999, 2003, 2007, 2011 and 2015 elections. Electoral violence is one of the strategies employed by Nigerian politicians during electioneering period to win election by illegal and dubious means. Desperate challenges of democratic governance operations and poor attitude of our leaders in Nigeria whose fails to meet the public demand of protecting lives and property as well as citizens welfare provision, the power drunk politicians often sponsor unemployed youths and stark illiterates to carry out assaults on their perceived political opponents with a view to manipulating election results to their own advantage. Therefore, this paper discusses electoral violence in the context of religion and its implication for sustainable development. Since electoral violence has been the bane of political stability and development in Nigeria. The researcher has uses secondary source of data to reviewed various literature on the subject matter to investigate the problem of election violence connecting it with religious or ethnic factor differences and used Karl Marx’s dialectical materialism theory on the discussion of the problems of election violence in Nigeria. This paper has made an in-depth analysis of electoral violence in Nigeria with particular focus on the Fourth Republic. The paper was of the view that right application of religious teaching, moral values is considered to be a veritable tool for ensuring violence free elections, which will guaranteed development of democracy in Nigeria. Keywords: Electoral Violence, Electoral Security, Religious and Ethnic Difference DOI: 10.7176/JCSD/59-04 Publication date: May 31 st 2020

The linkage between ethnicity, religious polarization and electoral violence in Africa has become one of the most recurring theme in the literature on democracy and elections in the continent. The electoral process in these emergent democracies have been observed to be marred by electoral violence which many have blamed on the diversity that characterize the socio-political configuration of these states which were inherited from European colonial powers at independence. In an attempt to explain the electoral violence phenomenon, existing works have limited the depths of their enquiry just below the surface by attributing the phenomenon to ethno-religious diversity which is prompted by competition for power and resource control. This paper makes an invitation for a deeper analysis by making a proposition based on the elite theory- which will serve as a framework for future studies on the subject matter. It proposes that the elite in Africa derive their support from their ethno-religious enclave and therefore have ethnic-based support structures. Since every society is shaped by the values and preferences of the elite, the demand of an ethno-religious enclave is therefore a reflection of the interest of the elite class in dominance of such enclave. As a result of this, ethnic competition and by extension electoral violence in African democratic experiments are a result of the clash of interest between these ethnic-based elite classes and their failure to harmonize their interest. To this end, we therefore suggest that electoral violence in Africa occurs mainly as 'proxy wars' between ethnic-based elite classes. Based on this assumption we propose that electoral violence is a function of the failure of the elite class from competing ethno-religious enclaves to harmonize their interest in an electoral process, and when harmonization of interest do occur there tends to be a peaceful election as was experienced in the 2015 presidential election in Nigeria which was peaceful despite the volatility of the political system at the time. This proposition sustains a new dimension in the debate and therefore provides itself as an analytical framework for future studies to build on.

Nigeria’s 2023 general elections, conducted under the enhanced provisions of the 2022 Electoral Act, were intended to strengthen electoral integrity through innovations such as the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV). However, the process was marred by operational shortcomings, technological failures, and incidents of violence, raising concerns about transparency and public trust. Guided by the Rational Choice Theory, this study examined the extent to which these elections advanced democratic governance and identified persistent challenges undermining credibility. The research adopted a qualitative approach, drawing on primary data from interviews with electoral officials, observers, and political actors, as well as secondary sources including INEC reports, legal documents, and scholarly literature. The study found that while BVAS and IReV improved aspects of voter accreditation and result transmission, inconsistent deployment, logistical delays, and limited contingency planning significantly weakened their effectiveness. The study further found technology alone cannot guarantee credibility unless supported by strong infrastructure, real-time technical support, and consistent implementation across all regions. Electoral violence, misinformation, and inadequate enforcement of electoral laws further eroded confidence in the process. Additionally, political exclusivity and unequal access to campaign resources hindered fair competition. Based on these findings, the study recommends strengthening INEC’s operational capacity, upgrading electoral technology with offline backup protocols, fostering deeper collaboration between INEC, security agencies, and civil society, expanding voter education, enforcing accountability for electoral offences, and promoting political inclusivity. If implemented, these measures could enhance electoral integrity, foster public trust, and advance Nigeria’s democratic consolidation.