REVISITING CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS AND 2015 GENERAL ELECTIONS IN NIGERIA: ITS RELEVANCE TO 2023 GENERAL ELECTIONS?

Abstract

The attention of the international community is on Nigeria again because it is another electioneering period (though amidst worsening personal security situations) when it is expected that the country should solidify and consolidate its nascent democracy. In view of this, the purpose of this paper is to x-ray the historic 2015 general elections which have been widely acknowledged to be arguably, the freest, fairest and most credible in Nigeria's electoral history since independence and recommend derived lessons that should be applied to the forthcoming general elections in 2023 in order to have an even better electoral success. While x-raying an array of secondary data on 2015 general elections in Nigeria, it was observed that the exceptional roles of the international civil society organisations with the collaboration of some local ones contributed very significantly to making that year's electoral process and outcomes historically successful and this, no doubt, has not been adequately covered in extant literature. The paper argues that although civil society organisations have been involved in Nigeria's elections for decades, at no time have the international csos been so deeply committed as in 2015 due mainly to some pre-election's predictions about the country's breakup.