NIGERIA is sliding dangerously towards violence before, during and after the February 2015 elections, the International Crisis Group (ICG) has warned.
In a major 48-page report titled Nigeria’s Dangerous 2015 Elections: Limiting the Violence, published Friday, the Brussels-based global conflict think-tank observed that while Nigerian elections are traditionally fiercely contested, the risks of violence around next February’s polls were particularly high.
According to the report, preparations for the elections are taking place in an increasingly volatile environment. It observed that while a two-party contest between the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) is a sign of progress for the nation’s democracy, the increasingly acrimonious relations between the two parties have already sparked numerous skirmishes among their supporters, and may turn bloodier once candidates start campaigning formally in December.
Apart from the inter-party tensions, the report noted that competing claims to the presidency between northern leaders and their Niger Delta counterparts, were also aggravating tensions around the elections.
It warned that: “As in 2011, clashes could erupt in some northern states if the APC, whose frontrunners are all northerners, loses the polls”. It added that “there is similarly a high risk of violence if the PDP loses the presidency, particularly in the Niger Delta, home region of the party’s candidate, President Goodluck Jonathan”.
The report identified the Boko Haram insurgency and state of emergency in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states as also threatening the conduct of peaceful and credible elections.
It warned that if the presidential election is not held in the three states, it may “fall short of the constitutional requirements for electing a president, namely that the winner score 25 per cent of the votes in two-thirds of the 36 states, thereby raising serious legal disputes”.
Other factors identified as compounding the risks of violence include the failure of the National Assembly to amend the Electoral Act, failure of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to produce a clean and credible voters register, and apparent bias by the police and other federally-controlled security services.
Commenting on the report, the Deputy Director of the International Crisis Group’s Africa Programme, E. J. Hogendoorn, observed that: “As Africa’s most populous country and largest economy, a Nigeria destabilised by election violence presents a very real security threat”.
To Nnamdi Obasi, International Crisis Group’s Senior Analyst for Nigeria, “with only three months to the polls, a sense of urgency is more than ever imperative, particularly on the part of the government, and the election management and security agencies”.
The group therefore called on the nation’s leaders to take several steps urgently, to limit the risks of widespread violence.