By Tonnie Iredia
Since December 12, 1959 when the first national pre-independence elections were held in Nigeria till today, we have had no election without citizens losing sleep and remaining exceedingly anxious over electoral violence. Even the June 12, 1993 Presidential election internationally recognised as the nation’s best had its own tension.
Indeed, the 1993 election was the first to be annulled in the nation’s history. Nigerian elections have always been subjected to a plethora of electoral malpractices featuring political intimidation, vote buying and collusion of the electoral body with interest groups to rig our polls. These anomalies have greatly discouraged citizen participation in elections leading to sequential decline in voter turn-out.
