ELECTION ADMINISTRATION IN NIGERIA'S FOURTH REPUBLIC: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF 2003-2007 AND 2011-2015 ELECTIONS

Abstract

Elections in Nigeria from independence till date have continued to recycle in a vicious violence and unimaginable manipulations especially from the political elites; this has attracted the attention of local and international communities. The perceptions of commentators and election observation reports is that the activities of most of the Election Management Bodies, EMB since independence had become synonymous with electoral fraud and injustice such that they represent no credible institution for facilitating the process of translating the true consent of citizenry into the legitimate representative authority of Nigerian state. However, in this present Fourth Republic, most especially in the 2011 and 2015 elections, the attitude of EMB (INEC) has relatively changed and there are noticeable improvements on the administrations of some of the elections conducted). It is on this note that the paper attempts to draw a comparative analysis of the election administration of the 2003-2007 and 2011-2015 elections using Election Day, which comprises of polling, Counting and Tabulation of results as key electoral cycles to measure and determine the performance and the credibility of the outcome of the four elections. It is then evident that electoral reform and some of the innovations introduced to the electoral process in 2011 and 2015 elections have greatly improved the performance of the election administration and the credibility of those elections. The paper then concludes by imploring INEC and other relevant bodies in election administration in Nigeria to sustain the performance and possibly improve on it for future elections.