ELECTORAL MALPRACTICE AND DEMOCRATIC PROCESS: AN ANALYSIS OF NIGERIA’S 2003 AND 2007 GENERAL ELECTIONS

Abstract

Electoral activities in Nigeria have assumed a crisis level. This is
so because almost every attempt to conduct a free and fair
election in Nigeria to ensure transition from civilian to civilian
leadership has often ended up in serious political chaos because
of the tendencies to manipulate the process of ensuring this
transition. Nigeria has never had an easy ride of transiting from a
civilian to civilian leadership. Consequent upon this, the analysis
of electoral malpractices as witnessed in Nigeria’s electoral
process with vivid examples of the 2003 and 2007 general
elections respectively will be done in this paper. Besides, the
forms of electoral malpractice and the techniques devised to
perpetrate electoral malpractice and other election-related fraud
by government and political parties will be treated herein. It was
discovered that electoral malpractice has adverse effects on our
political arrangement such as the problem of the country tottering
towards one-party state, electoral corruption and bad leadership
in future which is inimical to Nigeria’s democratic process. To
arrive at this conclusion the paper relied on secondary sourced
materials. The study therefore recommends that proper
mechanism such as political re-orientation program and rebirth
directed towards educating the masses on the dangers of electoral
malpractice on democratic governance must be embarked upon.