The Last Nigerian Presidential Election Was Not Free And Fair

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INTRODUCTION:

i. Nigeria And Their Past Election

In a quest to having a democratic state where elections are run based on the credibility of electoral candidates, Nigeria is looking forward to gaining its stability and regaining its place among African nations. Nigeria has a bicameral legislature comprising of House of Representatives and house of senate. Presidential and Gubernatorial elections are conducted after every four years. A study of the past elections conducted in the country had shown that there had never been any free and fair elections conducted in Nigeria with the exception of the June 12, 1993 election in which MKO Abiola was victorious. In fact, June 12 election is indeed worthy of appraisal because, when it was obvious that Abiola would emerge the winner of that election, his opponent, Bashir Tofa sent congratulatory messages to him. This has never happened in our present day Nigeria, instead our polity and our elections are characterized by violence, nepotism, thuggery, religious bigotry and election rigging.

The 2011 General Elections

Although, it was believed that Nigeria's last presidential election was transparent, it is indeed very important to put into consideration the numerous lives of the citizens of this great country that was lost, rigging, Kidnappings, thuggery, under-age voting and all sorts’ of electoral violence that took place during the last presidential election in Nigeria. The question is, with all these constructive disenfranchisement, was the election really free and fair? Was it credible? Can it be comparable to international standards? Of course, it was clear that the election was not worthy of becoming an advertisement for electoral improvement and so should not be consid...

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..., INEC must be effective during election conducts, there should be equal supports to every electoral candidate and adequate security should be provided. However, it is very correct to say that the 2011 elections was better than the previous violent- elections but it could not be worthy of serving as a perfect advertisement for other countries to emulate. Therefore, it could never be termed free and fair.

WORK CITED

[1] Abati, Reuben. Crossroads: What I Saw on Election Day. The Guardian. 10 April 2011: 66

[2] Africa Confidential. Africa Confidential. 6 August 2010. http://Web.Ebscohost.Com/Ehost/

Pdfviewer/ 27 October 2011.

[3] Audu, Saka Raji. Issues in 2003 General Election. Kano: Spra, 2003.Print.

[4] Safra, Jacob E. and Jorge Aguilar Cauz. The New Encyclopedia. Britannica. Vol. 29. Chicago:

Encyclopedia, 2011. Print.

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