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Journal VOL. 1 NO. 2, September. 2020, ISSN: 2714 - 4054

 

Elections Violence in Divided Societies: Issues and Challenges in Nigeria

Abubakar Mohammed, Fadeyi Taofiq James

 

ABSTRACT

Election is one of the fundamental features of democracy in both developed and developing countries. Though, the challenges of conducting elections are enormous, but still remained the most widely acceptable procedure of electing representatives into political offices in most African states. Thus, designing elections stand to be the furthermost tough task in democracy processes mostly in conflict prone societies that are divided along the line of ethnicity, religion and cultural diversities. In Nigeria, for instance, weak institutions, insecurity, political uncertainty, high rate of poverty and more or less bad governance have remained contentious issues affecting elections in the country. The rising tensions and happenings related to political violence, thuggery, banditry, and poor economy have constitute part of the confounding contests facing the groundwork of the pre 2019 general elections in Nigeria. Thus, the paper seeks to examine the rising issues and challenges in Nigeria’s build up to general elections. The methodology adopted was purely based on secondary (documentary) sources of data and anchored on the principle of theoretical model of electoral competition. The paper, therefore, argued that insecurity, political rivalry, weak institutions and poor economy among others are the appalling challenges of democracy and democratic processes in Nigeria.

 

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