Killing to Rule: An Analysis of Electoral Violence and the 2015 General Elections in Nigeria

Nigeria has been plagued by numerous teething problems in her march towards greatness. From long years of military dictatorship to insurgency and terrorism, the country has continued to grapple with the issues and problems of development. There was hope that with the return to civil rule in 1999 most of these problems would have abated, but 20 years after this has not been the case. One of the pluralities of problems that bedeviled the nation and which it has to contend with is electoral violence and irregularities. Since 1999, politicians have turned elections into theatre of war and successive elections had been worse than the previous ones with the exception of 2011 general elections deemed to have been the most credible although pockets of post election violence were still recorded in the Northern part of Nigeria. The 2015 elections did not fare better even when it is adjudged to have been free, fair and credible by both local and international observers. This paper examines the problem of electoral violence in Nigeria with focus on the 2015 general elections. It adopts a qualitative method with reliance on secondary sources of data and argues that although there was relative sanity in some parts of the country during the exercise, the elections recorded some casualties in states like Akwa Ibom and Rivers. The paper discusses electoral violence in Nigeria generally, and concludes that electoral violence has remained a sour taste in Nigeria’s bid for democratic consolidation and sustainability.

Keywords: Killing, Rule, Electoral Violence, Elections, Nigeria.