Title: Party Politics and Contentious Elections in Nigeria
Abstract: Experience has shown that since independence, Nigerian elections have been typified by unbridled divisiveness that have always placed the nation on her toes; creating immeasurable tension that touch on the unity and indivisibility of the nation. Study show that the contentions were mainly generated by the post-independence political parties and their leadership as they manipulate elections, accept and reject election results and employ their massive resources to either defend the election results or reject it. Thus, up till 2007 General Elections, all election results were keenly contested. Such situation has led to loss of lives, wanton destruction of private and public property and stultification of democratic consolidation in Nigeria. This paper is therefore, concerned with this ugly trend as it argues that the inordinate ambition of political parties and their leaders to win and control state resources, party membership, fear of being pushed into the opposition or ousted from power and the refusal to accept election results, etc are behind this undemocratic act. It concludes that there is urgent need for the reorganization of political parties in Nigeria to reflect what they should stand for in a democratic system. Thus, ideology-based party arrangements and effective law enforcement could be very useful.
Publication Year: 2015
Publication Date: 2015-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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