Power Contests Beyond the Electoral Arena: The Dynamics and Challenges of Election Management and Consolidation in Nigeria

Abstract

Since the dawn of the fourth republic, Nigeria has successfully organized six general elections with each of them raising issues of diverse concerns in relation to international best democratic practices. These contending issues have typically consisted of disputations concerning the credibility of the electoral processes, debates about whether the elections met the international watermarks of credibility anchored on free and fair processes, allegations of partisanship and compromise against the election management body, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and contestation and rejection of electoral outcomes, which often found expression in violence and deluge of court cases. Thus, electoral battles in Nigeria have not always been fought and concluded in the political arena. They have also been fought on the streets with crude weapons resulting in casualties and fatalities as well as in law courts with attendant politicization of the judiciary with dire consequences on the integrity of that arm of government. The Nigerian State has responded to these challenges by enacting electoral laws to bridge the hiatuses often identified as contributing to questionable electoral processes and outcomes with a view to squarely returning electoral contests to the political domains. This chapter undertakes a holistic examination of election management in Nigeria, its many trajectories as well as the efforts at building credible electoral processes. It also grapples with the challenges and setbacks in election management and attempts to illuminate them within the framework of class analysis. This chapter contends that electoral contests are still akin to class war and as long as the state is seen as a source of securing the material base of the elite, power would remain a major tool in the accumulation process. This invariably will make electoral contests serious battles and deepen the complexity of election management, thus making its consolidation a hard target to attain. This chapter canvasses the discouragement of the conversion of the state and political power to tools of accumulation so that the electoral preferences of the people will occupy a pride of place in the electoral calculus. This will serve as a prelude to the consolidation of election management.