INTRODUCTION:
Electoral violence, resulting from representational, campaign, balloting and result conflicts, has been a terminal problem of Nigerian polities since the 1950’s the Academic Staff Union of Nigeria Universities in a statement made in 2002 blamed the situation on “deepening poverty, unemployment and hunger, retrenchment resulting from privatization of the public property, manipulation of ethnic loyalties”. The other causes of the problem include religious fundamentalism, elite fragmentation, commoditisation of politics, the framing of Nigerian elections as “zero sum” events, and lack of independence of the judiciary, police and successive election administration bodies in Nigeria.
The problem has led to several deaths and great loss of property in different parts of Nigeria. It contributes in no small way to the present crisis of development in Nigeria and it promises to fracture the foundation on which the nation rests if urgent steps are not taken now to stem the rising tide.
It is widely acknowledged in extant development literature that elections play an important role in the life of a nation. It is one essential way by which citizens choose their leaders and, by so doing, contribute meaningfully to the identification of the kind of development they would like to see. This type of opportunity for political participation is absolutely necessary in a society like ours in which elite fragmentation, the absence of transparency and accountability have consistently displaced political dialogue. It is quite unfortunate to note that every election in Nigeria is associated with violence. This kind of situation damages the function of election as the context for social decision-making and creates nightmarish anxieties in the polity.
There is the deep culture of poverty and illiteracy. The prevailing economic situation which has exacerbated the problem of mass poverty, unemployment, and lack of access to the basic means of livelihood for the majority of the Nigerian people, as well as the high level of illiteracy, has made the people more susceptible to manipulation and easy recruitment as thugs during elections. The development of public policy, expected in the long run to deal with the problem of electoral violence, must address the issues of poverty and illiteracy.
Political participation, in this context, refers to the extent to which individuals can form associations to defend and promote their interests in the public realm. Conventional participation refers to the right to vote and be voted for; attend political meetings; initiate political discussions, and; expose oneself to democratic political stimuli. Unconventional, participation on the other hand refers to the right to challenge or defy established institutions or the dominant culture in a political party or system. The party structure and leadership in Nigeria does not have sufficient room for this kind of political participation. A few powerful people simply monopolize the party structures and systems and exclusively decide who does and gets what. Those who try to challenge the status quo are either forced out of the political party or made to pay the supreme price of losing their lives. This type of situation creates fears in a society and should be taken into consideration when mapping the state, of electoral (and not just political) violence in a society.
The formal and informal fees that candidates for political offices are expected to pay before getting the nomination of their political parties are usually out of tune with the reality Nigeria’s economy. The fees are in some cases as high as what an average Nigerian earns for a life-time. Some candidates end up selling their property or taking loans from banks, friends and relatives to raise the money. This constitutes a form of structural violence and partly explains why some elected politicians are very corrupt.
That a candidate could raise the needed resources for buying the nomination form does not suggest that he or she would not be dropped at his party’s convention. He or she has to be sponsored by a godfather or godmother whose motive is largely economic. The latter relies on brutal force to ensure that his godson delivers on his promise. Therefore, party conventions in Nigeria are usually a forum for enthroning new godfathers and dethroning old ones. People go there to “fight it out”. Money and brutal force, rather than issues or moral credentials, determine who gets what at the end of the day. The altercation starts when the regulations for party conventions are being drawn up. Every godfather or godmother builds into the process some confusion that would later give him or her an edge over others. This explains why party conventions in Nigeria are usually combustive. Some people even go to court to stop the conventions from holding once they discover that the structures on ground would not produce the particular outcomes they desire. Most of the political parties in Nigeria come out of their conventions more divided. Those who fail to have their ways at such conventions invest in electoral violence in the physical, psychological and structural senses of the term.
TYPES OF ELECTORAL VIOLENCE
What we seem to have succeeded in doing above is to show that electoral violence is not necessarily a once-for-all event but largely a continuum in an electoral process. We move from this position now to identify the types of electoral violence that we have in Nigeria.
They include the following:
(i) PRE-ELECTION VIOLENCE: This type takes physical, psychological and structural forms within and between political parties and manifests also in some lapses in official preparation for elections. Within political parties, it manifests in terms of the dominance of “elitism”. Elitism as used here refers to systems in which the exercise of political control by a small number of persons is institutionalized in the structure of political activity. What we are referring to here is a situation where some powerful individuals within the party system deliberately frustrate all efforts at popular political participation. At the interparty level, the violence manifests in terms of physical and verbal assaults of political opponents. This type of problem could also manifest in the form of certain unbecoming attitudes by INEC or security officials. Politicians become very agitated and begin to think of how to manipulate the electoral process when INEC is seen not to be transparent in how it relates with the political parties. INEC could also be blamed if it is seen not to have put the right structures in place for ensuring that an election is free and fair. Certain statements by electoral officials at this stage could constitute one form of violence or the other on political parties. The way security agencies intervene in pre-election conflicts within and between political parties could also constitute one form of violence or the other.
(ii) ELECTION-DAY VIOLENCE: This is the most documented. At the structural level, it includes absence or inadequacy of election materials or even election officers at polling booths. It includes partisan behaviour by security officials. At the physical level, this type of violence includes killing and maiming of voters, electoral officials, and security operatives.
(iii) POST-ELECTION VIOLENCE: This type of violence takes place after election results have been announced. It includes killing of Political opponents, burning down of public or private property, violent public demonstrations, etc. A recent study that I have just completed shows that this type of violence can include publishing of abusive advertorials against those who lost in elections. At the structural level, this type of problem is also evident in the length of time it takes to settle election disputes. Some of the disputes associated with the 2023 elections in Nigeria are still in court and might not be settled until 2027 when the candidates being challenged may have completed their four-year term of office. This is nothing but structural violence; and it can instigates physical violence during future elections.
PREVENTING ELECTORAL VIOLENCE.
The problems that could lead to violence during elections are already being discussed at different levels by Nigerians. The first and the most important is the role of INEC. Nigerians were disappointed by the role played by the electoral body during the 2023 election and are already apprehensive that history might repeat itself in 2027. How do we rebuild the trust of Nigerians in the electoral body? The role of the police in the 2023 elections was also disappointing. How do we ensure that history does not repeat itself in 2027? How do we re-position the media for playing positive roles in the conduct of the 2027 elections? How do we deal with the problem of elite fragmentation that is gradually tearing Nigeria and Nigerians apart?
RISK ASSESSMENT AND EARLY WARNING SIGNS MONITORING
It has been established in both peace scholarship and practice that violent conflicts rarely erupt spontaneously; they are heralded by some clearly discernible warning signs that can be monitored. Early warnings are interpretations that conflict in a high-risk situation is likely and imminent. Risk assessments precede and complement early warning, through identifying background and intervening conditions that establish the risk for potential crisis and conflict. They focus on monitoring and analytical attention on high risk situations before they are fully developed and they provide a framework for interpreting the results of real-time monitoring of events. Signs of what to expect during elections in Nigeria are already being suggested by the political class’s growing distrust for INEC by the partisan intervention of the political class in intra-party conflicts;
EMPOWERING LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES
Many of the cases of electoral violence in Nigeria are blamed on the police and. other security agencies. They are blamed for either doing too little or engaging in “mission creeps” (exceeding their legal bounds) during elections. The first step for empowering these agencies to perform better during elections is provide them with financial and logistical support for doing threat analysis to ascertain the scale, locations, and types of electoral security threats. The next step is to work with them to identify practical steps for stemming the emerging problems. One problem that the police have particularly faced during past elections in Nigeria is the lack of sufficient vehicles for getting their personnel to polling locations. How can we make the Nigerian state respond positively to this challenge before the 2027 elections?
Many of the violent conflicts that took place during past elections in Nigeria can be blamed on “high-handedness” of the police at political campaigns, on election days, and in providing security for elected state officials. This problem can be reduced by organising more conflict-handling workshops for the police.
HELPING INEC TO HELP ITSELF
There is the need to provide assistance for INEC to increase its capacity to manage elections in a transparent and independent manner.
INTER-AGENCY COLLABORATION
The level of violence witnessed in different parts of Nigeria today readily suggests that no agency can unilaterally prevent the future elections from being bedeviled by violence. The military are now deployed to different parts of Nigeria where there are violent conflicts. The way these military men were slaughtered in different parts of the Niger Delta readily shows that there is a limit to what we can achieve through military during violence. The NGOs that have been training Nigerians on peace since the early 1990s cannot claim to have solved all the problems either. What all these is pointing to now is that all the groups working for peace in Nigeria must collaborate and cooperate by pooling their resources together for ensuring that the 2027 elections are violence-free. The inter-agency collaboration that we are trying to promote here must involve INEC, the police, the media, the political parties and the NGOs doing peace work in the country. For now, most of these stakeholders work at cross purpose rather than cooperating with one another. To make 2027 the peaceful year we all crave for, we must all work together.
ELECTORIAL VIOLENCE IN KOGI STATE.
Kogi state is known for electoral violence, particular the 2019 governorship election that earn us TATATATA due to the level of violence that characterized that election, before, during and after. Due to the desperations of politicians, that want to win at all cost, even when the electorate have rejected them in principle. Part of the reason is due to ethnic rivalry, passive marginalization, domination and oppression.
If we have to go spiritual, we thank God that, 2011 governorship election, particularly, election-day activities were relatively peaceful. Although there were skirmishes before the election between the two rival political parties and post-election-day crises which even led to the attack of Resident Electoral Commissioner residence by armed thugs. Off course, as we all know, the outcome of that governorship election is been disputed at the governorship election tribunal which was move to Abuja, as a result of fear of attack due claims and counter-claims by political party supporters.
CONCLUSION
It is apt to observe, as a way of concluding this paper that an election is an alternative to violence in the sense that it is a mechanism by which popular political participation is promoted in a society. It enables citizens to hold their leaders accountable for their governance styles. It is thus a contradiction for such a civic exercise to become the fulcrum of violence as is regularly the case in Nigeria. Stakeholders resort to violence when they perceive the electoral process is perceived to be unfair unresponsive and corrupt. Those working towards preventing electoral violence must therefore invest sufficiently in ensuring that the process is as transparent as possible.
Thanks for the opportunity to speak during this all-important event by PIN.
Reference:
Conflict Tracking Dossier. Edited by: Albert Isaac Olawale
A paper presentated by
IDRIS MILIKI ABDUL
Executive Director
Conscience for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution (CHRCR),
Lokoja, Kogi State.
at the
OGUN PEACE SUMMIT: PARTNERING FOR SAFER AND RESILNCE COMMUNITIES IN OGUN STATE, NIGERIA.
organised by:
Peace Initiative Network (PIN)
Abeokuta, Ogun State.
On 30th April, 2024.
