Election violence and insecurity

Attempts to manipulate the outcome of elections in Nigeria using violent methods have a long history dating back to the First Republic. For instance, the well pronounced ethnic allegiance of the dominant political parties in 1964/65 led to massive violence. The ethnic fanaticism resulted in massive irregularities in the ensuing elections, consequently venting Nigeria’s first military coup. This bad precedent set in the first democratic experiment replays in almost every election held in the country. The post-war democratic experience test case was the general election of 1983, with a heavy dosage of violence and massive rigging in many southwestern states. Once again, the resultant effect was a coup d’état that ousted that regime. The 1993 election seemed to have deviated from this ugly norm principally because of the close supervision of the election process by the then military government and the overriding desire of the populace to return fully to democracy after many years of military rule.

However, the annulment of the election resulted in massive protests and civil disobedience, leading to an interim national government and subsequently another military coup. Unlike the 1993 election, thuggery, political mercenaries, manipulation, and rigging dominated the 2003 elections to consolidate the People’s Democratic Party’s hold of the Nigerian political space. The same trend repeated in 2007, in which the outgoing president declared a do-or-die win for the People’s Democratic Party. The 2011 election was largely credible, free, and fair, with minimal levels of violence. Nevertheless, the post-election violence that followed the declaration of Dr Goodluck Jonathan as president and successor to the late Musa Yar’adua was tremendous, mainly in the northern parts of Nigeria. According to the 2011 Human Rights Watch, about 800 people died during and after the election, while 65,000 persons were displaced. In the 2015 general election, there were approximately seventy reported cases of election violence, with more than thirty people killed, according to the European Union Election Observation Mission. In the same vein, the Council on Foreign Relations data also shows that approximately 59 persons lost their lives in the 2019 general elections.

In many instances, the per-day casualties in election violence compare substantially with the rate of daily fatalities in full-blown warfare. A key source of election-related altercations in Nigeria is the religious and ethnic sectarian divides. But there are other sources, namely government security agencies acting against election-related protest groups or people at polling booths or vice versa. Others include the government threatening international actors with either killing or expulsion from the country. A good example was the governor of Kaduna State’s threat to butcher and package the body parts of foreign missions in sacks should they interfere in the 2019 elections. Massive wastages of life and property may occur at any stage in the electoral cycle, particularly during campaigns, voting operations, election day, the verification of results, and post-election. According to the Nigerian Civil Society Situation Room, approximately 650 people lost their lives in six months from the start of the election campaign to supplementary elections in 2019. In the same vein, the United States Institute of Peace recorded 100 and 300 election-related deaths in 2003 and 2007, respectively. In 2011, the number jumped to 800, with 87.5% occurring in Kaduna State alone.

Governance failure and a fragile justice system have created a window for violating the principles underlying liberal democracy in Nigeria. The ruling class and the political party in control of the state political structure always find ways of weakening the capacity of the electoral commission to organize free and acceptable elections. The government’s inability to tame corruption and criminal intensity effortlessly make it possible for those with the do-or-die and winner-takes-it-all mentality to get their way within the competitive electoral space. Political elites take advantage of the Nigerian population’s highly pronounced sectarian divides, ignorance, illiteracy, and poverty as fertile grounds to initiate such manipulations. The electoral umpires, the security agencies such as the police, including many observers receive massive bribes to ease result manipulation. Often, violent processes become necessary for achieving the desired outcomes. Again, even the security agencies provide cover to the political thugs and mercenaries of candidates that have bribed them. In general, there is manifestly systemic governance failure repeatedly demonstrated in the electoral umpire’s inability to cope with these kinds of recurring electoral challenges. And since the snake will always produce snake, leaders imposed on the population through this process can neither provide nor guarantee good governance and the associated socio-economic development.

There are at least four primary causes of pre-and post-election violence in Nigeria. The first is the predominance of ethnic and religious forces in determining political allegiances. Although political party structures seemingly cut across these demographic domains, they nevertheless play significantly in framing people’s choice and support of political candidates. Consequently, since such progressive factors as candidates’ qualification and capability to deliver on the job rank relatively low in supporting electoral candidates, political supporters are blinded by these sectarian forces. Nothing can spark violence in Nigeria much quicker than ethnic and religious-based disagreements. The second factor is the weakness of our electoral management institutions. Their consistent inability to conduct elections with minimal logistical inadequacies leads to perceptions of deliberate disenfranchisement by targeted political candidates and subsequently leads to violence.

For instance, the Nigerian electoral umpire has always had issues with the devices necessary for seamless electronic-driven procedures. Even where such devices are working efficiently, other easily manageable planning challenges pop up, leading to feelings of exclusion, public disenchantment and consequent violent showdown. But the weakness of the institution also connects with the inefficiencies of the entire justice system, which ordinarily should support the electoral management body to function most efficiently. In some instances, the police and other security agencies support and manipulate election results. The third is the bottled-up resentments among politicians in various camps. Each camp, in turn, seeks to dominate or at least create significant fears that could permit the intimidation of political opponents and the manipulation of election outcomes. The fourth factor involves the exposition of election fraud by election monitors and observers. This kind of exposition always sparks off some measure of violence among groups in different political camps.

Preventing and managing electoral violence should encapsulate the identification of the structural risks and triggers of electoral violence and incorporate their mitigation strategies at every stage in the electoral cycle. In effect, conflict management strategies should be an integral part of the entire electoral process. For instance, effective monitoring of levels of stakeholder compliance with mitigation strategies for adequately identified and documented violence triggers at the political campaign level will considerably reduce pre-election violence. Therefore, this approach means that the stakeholders in our election championed by the electoral commission should implement a comprehensive set of solidly designed strategies for early warning, crisis prevention, and management. This set of strategies should underlie robust public education and sensitization aimed at disabling the roots of electoral violence and the impacts of such sources of conflict as ethnic or religious demography.

The National Orientation Agency, working alongside schools, religious organizations, market organizations, and non-governmental organizations focusing on this area, can do much better than we currently have. Third, effective monitoring of pre-and post-election activities is critical. As it stands presently, it appears that most of the missions focus narrowly on the actual election and miss out on the build-up to the election and what happens after the election. All three phases define the success or failure of the election and deserve close monitoring for early warning and timely crisis management. Fourth, the effective management of the logistics performance expectation in terms of adequacy of electoral inputs and the quality of the overall process will go a long way in minimizing the frustrating resentments that often result in violence. Of particular importance is the adequacy of policing the entire process. Often, withdrawn locations are unpoliced and create opportunities for result manipulators to trigger violent responses from those not benefiting from such fraud.

Virtually every adult of the voting age has a role in eliminating electoral violence in Nigeria. Nevertheless, some critical stakeholders such as the electoral commission, the security, the international community, religious leaders, community leaders, and the judiciary have much more pronounced responsibility in this regard. For instance, the primary responsibility for delivering most of the initiatives for minimizing the continued occurrences of election violence outlined already seemingly tilt heavily on the side of the electoral commission, the National Orientation Agency and the police. At least, they have statutory responsibilities in this respect. But suppose electoral violence in Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, is unattended to and spills over? The unpleasant consequences will most definitely affect several other countries. Therefore, that potentially severe impact underscores the need for the international community to play a more critical role in closely observing and correctly reporting electoral activities at pre-election, actual election, and post-election stages. The international community is unarguably the most neutral stakeholder whose reports mean much. Community and religious leaders also have an equally strong duty to educate and sensitize the general public, particularly people within their jurisdictions, on the necessity of maintaining peace and avoiding manipulative activities that would lead to violence.

Finally, as long as elections in Nigeria are not substantially peaceful, we will always live with outcomes that do not stand on free, fair, and acceptable processes. Aside from other factors, electoral violence always points to perceptions and realities around result manipulation, which sabotages the opportunities for popularly accepted leadership. Unfortunately, Nigeria’s number one problem today is leadership and, most regrettably, the predominance of political office holders imposed on the masses through these unorthodox channels.