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ISSN : 1744-2532 (Print) 2516-5305 (Online)
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The 2015 presidential election in Nigeria was like no other in the history of presidential politics in the country. For the first time in the country’s political history, a number of opposition parties merged in a bid to provide a competitive challenge to the ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Hitherto, opposition political parties had been adept at talking tough and grandstanding about a mega party, which often came to nought. Surprisingly in the run up to the 2015 elections some regional-based political parties surmounted obstacles and against all expectations consummated a merger that gave birth to the All Progressives Congress (APC). The parties that merged to give birth to APC were the Action Congress of Nigeria (A.C.N.), which was dominant in the South-west part of the country and was led by former Governor of Lagos State Ahmed Bola Tinubu, the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), which was formed by former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari in 2009 to help him contest the 2011 presidential election, the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) on whose platform Buhari contested the 2003 and 2007 presidential election and came second on each occasion winning respectively 32.2 percent and 18 per cent of the popular vote (BBC, 2007). A faction of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), which was popular in the southeast, was also part of the alliance.
There was palpable tension in the land as the APC was seen by some as an alliance between the core North (Northwest and Northeast) and the Yoruba states against President Jonathan who is a Christian from the minority Ijaw ethnic group (Aribisala, 2014). In the 2011 presidential election, key politicians from the North, (essentially the North-west and the North-east) had insisted that Jonathan, who succeeded Yaradua in 2010, should simply serve out the former’s tenure but should not contest the 2011 presidential election as that would amount to cheating the North of its turn in the alleged PDP’s zoning arrangements. Jonathan contested and won that election but never managed to get the core North to support his presidency (Adibe, 2015a)
The 2015 election was therefore fought on the shadows of the 2010/2011 zoning controversy. Against all predictions, the election was largely free of violence as the outcome was legitimated by the decision of President Jonathan to concede defeat (Adibe, 2015b).
In this issue four articles x-rayed the 2015 general elections. Hakeem Onapajo used an ‘Electoral Integrity’ framework of analysis to interrogate how free and fair the election was. In this framework, which was popularized by the Electoral Integrity Project, the credibility of elections are measured by eleven criteria: electoral laws; electoral procedures; boundaries; voter registration; party registration; campaign media; campaign finance; voting process; vote count; post-election matters; and electoral management. Using this framework Onapajo concludes that even though the 2015 election achieved a better outcome than the other presidential elections before it, there were still a number of challenges, especially at the pre-election phase of the process.
George A. Genyi examined ‘Electoral Violence and the 2015 General Elections in Nigeria’. He noted that the “extensiveness and destructiveness of the violence associated with the 2011 Presidential election results, especially in the northern parts of the country, haunted Nigerians as the nation moved towards the 2015 polls.” This, he argued, was accentuated by the fact that the two major candidates in the 2011 presidential elections were also to face each other again in the 2015 election. He argued that “despite pockets of violent incidents especially during and after the election, the exercise was considered peaceful, free, fair and credible.” He attributed the relative absence of violence during and after the elections to the “commitments of politicians to a peaceful election exemplified by the national and state wide peace bonds [which] impacted positively on the elections and their outcome.” He further argues that by “conceding defeat even before the final tally of votes, President Goodluck Jonathan and other contestants succumbed to their commitment to a peaceful election.”
Martin Ugbudu examined ‘The Role of Data Capture Machine in the Outcome of the 2015 Elections in Nigeria’. Focusing on the Permanent Voters’ Card and the Biometric Data Capture Verification Machine (otherwise known as ‘Card Readers) which were part of the measures introduced by the Independent National Electoral commission (INEC) to authenticate voters and checkmate the tendency to rig through inflation of the number of voters, Ugbudu contended that the new technology “impacted positively on the outcome of the elections” and “greatly minimized rigging and imbued public confidence in the electoral process.”
Ejeviome Eloho Otobo and Oseloka H. Obaze analysed five factors that they believed proved decisive in the outcome of the 2015 presidential election. They identified the variables as the Boko Haram insurgency, President Jonathan’s inability to rescue the Chibok girls, pressures from the big powers for the elections to be got right, the ‘integrity appeal’ of Buhari, the APC presidential candidate and the fear factor of national implosion. They argued that “it was the combination of these factors that induced the President Jonathan into conceding electoral loss two days ahead of the final tally of the results of the presidential elections by the Independent National Electoral Commission, paving the way for a broad acceptance of an unprecedented electoral outcome, where an incumbent president was defeated.”
In addition to the theme articles we have two non-theme articles: one, on a ‘Study of Awareness and Attitude of Undergraduate Students of Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria, to Skill Development Opportunities in the New Media’ by Ogochukwu C. Ekwenchi and the other on ‘Constituting Power and Democracy: Zimbabwe’s 2013 Constitution Making and Prospects for Democracy’ by Cornelias Ncube and Ufo Okeke-Uzodike.