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The report
entitled, ‘Nigeria ’s
2019 Elections: Change, Continuity and the Risk to Peace’, is a presentation of
USIP’s electoral violence risk assessment research which was arrived at after
interviews conducted in some selected states across the country.
Based on
interviews conducted in Adamawa, Anambra, Ekiti,
“These shifts
include changing narratives about insecurity and the increased prominence of
intra-political party disputes relative to the previous elections, which
suggest that significant electoral violence is likely to occur in the period
before balloting.
“Nigeria ’s
history of electoral violence is, for many, an unfortunately accepted fact of
life, and cannot be viewed in isolation from the many social and economic
inequalities, ethnic and religious divisions, and structural weaknesses such as
corruption and weak state capacity.
“While many
conventional risks of election violence endure, including the willingness (or
not) of candidates to accept the results, the use and abuse of state power to
unfairly favour incumbents, and the ease with which young people can be
mobilised toward violence, a simplistic narrative that violence is ever present
and inevitable obscures important contextual changes in Nigeria since 2015.
These changes, documented in this report, demonstrate the need to disaggregate
electoral violence’s causes and contributing factors if such acts are to be
properly understood, contextualized, and mitigated”.
The report said
the failure of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to manage its
internal affairs successfully will contribute to violence in the forthcoming
polls.
“Divisions
within both the APC and the PDP were largely seen as being more consequential
now than the historic interparty disputes that characterised the run-up to the
2015 elections. Particularly in the ruling APC, the inability of the party to
consolidate its internal party structure and effectively resolve internal
rivalries is expected, in many states, to potentially lead to violence, with
party primaries and nomination processes particularly vulnerable to disruption.
“Despite the
risks, serious violence in 2019 is not inevitable, even if that possibility
seems great. The Nigerians interviewed in the course of this research have a
keen sense of what is necessary for peace, whom they hold most responsible for
violence, and what can be done to confront and deter those who seek to
perpetrate violence.
“As one person
interviewed for this report remarked, ‘there is no magician necessary’ to
ensure elections are largely peaceful. Many others argued for preventive action
to be more locally grounded.
“The best
party…to engage for nonviolence [is] always the local people because they have
the most to lose,” argued one interviewee from Rivers State ”.
Going further,
the report said “across the states surveyed, as well as across socioeconomic
classes and political persuasions, opinions about Nigeria ’s key electoral actors are
strikingly common, reflecting a broader narrative of mistrust and uncertain
confidence in state institutions.
“Of all the
state’s institutions, most respondents felt that peaceful elections in 2019 are
contingent on the performance of Nigeria ’s INEC. Given the relative
success of the 2015 elections, they felt that INEC ought to be able to deliver
credible elections again in 2019. They feared, however, that any regression
from the level of performance achieved in 2015 could lead to violence because
some would view the failings not as a result of incompetence but as deliberate
attempts to frustrate the will of the voters”.
“Yet, while the
potential for election violence exists, there are signs of hope. Some states
have developed successful election conflict-mitigation practices. In the short
amount of time remaining, INEC and the police should undertake a number of key
reforms. The United States ,
along with other international supporters of the electoral process, should also
intensify their efforts to reinforce the work of these key Nigerian
institutions.
“The first-ever
peaceful transition of power in 2015 raised expectations for government
performance. Many Nigerians feel their hopes have not been met. Some
respondents suggest the electorate is sufficiently disappointed that voter
apathy will be greater in 2019 than in 2015, with the unifying narrative of
change that helped elect the APC in 2015 much less compelling as a factor in
mobilising the electorate, and perceptions that another defeat of the
presidential incumbent is less likely to happen in 2019.
“Disappointment
with the APC that leads to lower voter turnout could have implications for a
rise in electoral violence in two possible ways: fearing lower turnout in
ruling party strongholds, some posited that violence could be used in
opposition areas to deter relatively better turnout. Alternatively, some felt
that intimidation tactics to shore up the vote could be used to coerce
otherwise reluctant voters to participate”.
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