A Cycle of Elections without Democracy?: Nigeria’s Troubled Democratisation in Perspective

Elections are the lifeblood of democracy which avail voters the opportunity of choosing and legitimising a government. While the holding of elections marks a good feature of democracy, the quality of such elections determines whether they conform to acceptable standard in terms of meeting the democratic aspirations and the needs of the people. Although research on democratization in Africa has grown in recent years, democratization itself has been slow to take hold in most African countries.  Countries that appeared to be making a transition to democracy in the mid-1990s have stalled or reversed their transition in recent years. In Nigeria, since 1999, with the passing of a new federal constitution, elections have become more regular as witnessed in 1999, 2003, 2007, 2011 and 2015. Diligent observation however, would confirm that these elections were flawed as a result of malpractices and improper electoral administration such that the political experiment is usually referred to as civil rule rather than democracy. Findings gleaned from the five rounds of elections in the country since 1999, in spite of the staggered successes, show the limitations of elections in consolidating democracy in divided societies.