THE 2019 GENERAL ELECTIONS AND DEMOCRACY IN NIGERIA

Abstract

The 2019 general elections has come and gone with the All Progressive Congress (APC) wining the general elections, while many opposition parties have gone to court to challenge the outcome of the elections. The elections marked the sixth uninterrupted general elections since the return to democratic rule in 1999. These elections took a cue from the preceding elections of 2015 that used electronic gadgets such as Permanent Voter's Card (PVC), card reader and other electronic devices in conducting the elections. The conduct of elections in Nigeria right from the colonial period lacked the essential ingredients of democratic electoral process, which are transparency, freeness and fairness. Elections in Nigeria have always been characterized by irregularities such as violence through snatching and destruction of ballot papers and boxes, violence during campaigns, manipulation of the process at different levels of decision making by politicians, corruption and fraud, rigging through ballot stuffing, falsification of election results and so on. The conducts of the 2019 General Elections were not completely free from fraud or irregularities in some parts of Nigeria. The objective of this paper is to examine the 2019 General Elections and democracy in Nigeria. The paper therefore, recommends among other things that for democracy to be fully achieved, the electoral process must be strengthened, elections must be violence free as democracy cannot survive in an atmosphere of chaos and trauma.