Handbook for Concerned Citizens and Election Volunteers

Journal of African elections, 2012

Nigeria's 2011 elections marked a watershed in the country's democracy. Before then elections conducted there had been marred by controversy, with monitors and observers who assessed the quality of elections consistently questioning their integrity. The 2011 elections, however, received resounding approval as an improvement. This article examines the monitoring and observation by international and local groups of the 2011 elections. It underlines the qualified credibility of the elections considering the level of irregularities and violence noted by observers and monitors and argues that the declaration of the elections as credible must not detract from the need to be mindful of their inadequacies if Nigeria is to reap the benefit of election monitoring and observation in future elections.

The near six decades of Nigeria as an independent nation has been fraught with instability arising essentially from attempts at democracy through periodic elections. These elections have been largely chacterized by hooliganism, ballot-snatching, theft of election materials, kidnapping of political opponents, assassination of political rivals, arson, assault and physical destruction of election materials and even intimidation and outright molestation or killing of election officials. This paper therefore went down the memory lane to establish and, using the Marxist theory of state attempt to explain, the pattern of elections that have characterized democracy in Nigeria and locate the place of citizen observers in Nigerian elections.

CYPDAN Journal of Social Science and Economic Development, 2023

Since 1999, elections have become regular in Nigeria. From 1999 to 2023 the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had conducted six consecutive elections. During each of these elections foreign observers trooped into the country in order to study and monitor the electioneering process from campaign to elections. This paper examines the challenges of foreign election observations within the context of how such observations improve or undermine the credibility of these elections. The paper thus argued that credible elections are the hallmark of democratic society, and foreign observations, despite it's controversially helps to improve the credibility of Nigeria's elections through identification of areas of strengths and weakness or problems to be address. Often, INEC has been responding to their observations, which accordingly improves the effectiveness and efficiency of the electoral process in the country.

The European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 Unported License, permitting all non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

CYPAN International Journal of Social Science and Economic Development, 2023

Since 1999, elections have become regular in Nigeria. From 1999 to 2023 the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had conducted six consecutive elections. During each of these elections foreign observers trooped into the country in order to study and monitor the electioneering process from campaign to elections. This paper examines the challenges of foreign election observations within the context of how such observations improve or undermine the credibility of these elections. The paper thus argued that credible elections are the hallmark of democratic society, and foreign observations, despite it's controversially helps to improve the credibility of Nigeria's elections through identification of areas of strengths and weakness or problems to be address. Often, INEC has been responding to their observations, which accordingly improves the effectiveness and efficiency of the electoral process in the country.

Scholars Journal of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences , 2017

Elections in emerging democracies such as Nigeria have overtime been fraught with controversies, due to lackin tradition of impartiality and undemocratic nature of politics in that part of the world. This has made international election monitoring and observation (IEMO) imperative. Existing studies have largely focused on the external politics of IEMO to the neglect of internal factors such as high premium placed on election victory, effects of electoral relatedviolence on IEMO outcome and the peaceful conduct of election, the interface between local and international observers‟ reports and their implications for democracy. This study, therefore, investigated the influence of aforementioned internal factors on IEMO outcome and democracy in Nigeria. Keywords: Politics, election, international election monitoring and observation, electoral violence.

Canadian Social Science, 2013

In the early years of Nigeria, its democratic structures suffered a great setback as the military intervened in its political life partly on account of the rigging, acrimony and bloodletting that attended the 1964 general elections and the 1965 western regional elections. Since then and through all other subsequent elections, there have been accusations and counter accusations by the contending political parties of rigging or manipulation of the electoral process .Hence the adoption of the practice of election observation or monitoring in the 1990's with a view to strengthening the country's democracy. Since the practice crept into the country's political landscape, the study discovered that, it has to some extent, further propped the country's democracy as some voters now have confidence more than ever before, to participate in the country's elections believing that their votes will count. However of recent, there is this allegation that some of the observers do compromise the process of observation as they tend to write biased report favoring the political parties they have sympathy for. Thus the suspicion that election observation might be a threat to the democracy it is supposed to protect. The study investigated this suspicion and discovered through both primary and secondary data that, although there might be few cases of comprise particularly by local observers, however, the cumulative effect of these is not enough yet to constitute a threat to democratic consolidation in the country. Despite this, the paper proceeded to recommend the panacea to ameliorate the grey areas in election observation in the country in order to make it a much stronger exercise and thereby exuding further salutary effect on the country's search for an enduring democratic temper and practice.

The intricacy and professional skills essential for electoral management necessitate that an institution or institutions be upstanding for electoral activities. Since the advent of the Fourth Republic, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has been the election management body in charge of general elections in Nigeria whereas the State Independent Electoral Commissions (SIECs) are in control for elections at the local government level. Lately, there has been a unique devotion to electoral reforms motivated by the consciousness in political and electoral management circles that transforming social environments entail a reconsideration of electoral arrangements by the analytical responsiveness of election observers, and by the dawn of international organizations advancing democracy. As elections scrutiny intensifies, the dearth of understanding and the 'experience gap' in the technical know-how to administer elections by Election Management Bodies (EMBs) in Nigeria have been overwhelmed by an 'integrity gap'-a weakened public conviction in the integrity and meticulousness of their activities. This has led peoples' interest to be engrossed on reforming electoral systems through independent Electoral Management Bodies (EMBs) with extensive powers and responsibilities to deliver better electoral services while improving free and fair electoral outcomes.This paper seeks to connect the functions and organization of EMBs in Nigeria especially in the Fourth Republic, as well as proffers expansive scope of facts on good practices on electoral management to concerned observers of electoral and political matters.

Nigerian elections are always faced with, it is imperative to look back at the 2011 presidential election with a view of knowing and understanding some of the challenges that Nigeria elections are plagued with. It is on this note that this research work strives to look at the challenges of conducting credible elections in Nigeria. Using the elite theory as theoretical framework, the work reviewed some literatures on the concept of election, electoral processes, voting behaviour and electoral violence. Further on, the work used the primary source of data collection to collect data whereby 120 questionnaires in close ended form and was administered in Zaria. The findings revealed that although the 2011 presidential election was not too successful, yet it was a leap forward as compared to others. Also from the findings, it was discovered that the major challenges of Nigeria elections are ballot box snatching, thugs' actions, bribery and insecurity. To overcome this challenges, the work propose that priority should be given to electoral activities by citizens and institutions of government and that full autonomy be granted to the electoral body by government. 3

Jurnal Komunikasi, Malaysian Journal of Communication

Citizen journalism is fast becoming an alternative platform for the common man to lend their voices in the process of governance. This is especially relevant in Nigeria, where those in the corridor of power have gagged the media denying the citizens the right to contribute to personal or national discourse. Drawing lessons from Nigeria's Machiavellian leadership recruitment system with attendant prebendal skews in elections characterized by all sorts of irregularities and fraud, the study looks at the role of citizen journalists in monitoring election via social media platform. Survey research method was used for the study, and the questionnaire as instrument for data collection. The respondent for the study comprised of 300 and 400 level students of Mass Communication Department Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University Lapai. The study purposively sampled 150 respondents for the study. Findings reveal that citizen journalism has a critical role to play in election monitoring in Nigeria. The study discovered that citizen journalism can enhance transparency and accountability in the conduct of elections. This to some extent can bring credibility to the electoral process as citizens would be allowed to participate fully in the electoral process. However, the study noted some inherent dangers associated with citizen journalism / journalists in general. Some of the drawbacks of citizen journalism include the following; it may lead to mass revolt and protest, invasion of people's privacy, and the dissemination of unverifiable information by members of the public. The study, among other things, recommends that citizen journalists need to be trained in order to be acquainted with the journalistic code of media ethics.