No abstract

Electoral fraud is identified as an albatross on genuine democratisation in Nigerian politics. The Nigerian political culture demonstrates a zero-sum game where a winner takes all and where a winner employs all amoral ineptitude to secure victory. The situation is escalated at the grassroots level in the country where the constitutional three-tier of the federal, state and local system was bastardised by the states who succeeded in emasculating the local governments under their absolute personal control. The local council polls usually turned into a charade that is perpetuated by charlatans in the name of elections where in reality, forceful imposition, selection and subversion of the process became the order of the day. The study examined how the use of SIECs aided the phenomenon of electoral fraud at the grassroots level where the local council elections are designed and arrested by state governors based on their selfish desire. The study utilised both primary and secondary sources of data. The data obtained were analysed and interpreted using mixed method of statistical tools and content analysis. The study discovered that the SIECs became tools in the pawn of the state governors that they leveraged in manipulating the local government elections against the will of the electorates at the grassroots and that has tremendously affects the democratisation process in the country where authentic institutional building remains a mirage even after more than 20 years of democratic experiment. The study recommends that the SIECs should be abrogated and the INEC should conduct the local council elections together with the national elections at the same time.

Political parties are the engine wheel and the machinery on which the vehicle of democracy thrives. Democracies require sound parties with focused leadership and a clear ideology for national development on the assumption of power. In Nigeria, the two dominant ruling parties of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) which ruled for sixteen years and the All Progressives Congress (APC) which is currently in its fifth year of ruling are pre-occupied with internal leadership crises which collapsed the former and are threatening to tear the latter today. The inability of the country’s political leaders to establish parties with a dedicated and pragmatic party leadership is affecting the democratic governance in the country despite having the experience of the longest experiment in the history of the country. The research utilised both primary and secondary sources of data. The primary sources of data consist of an in-depth personal interview with some selected stakeholders in the subject matter of study and direct participant observation. The secondary sources are documented materials such as books, journals, internet sources and other related documents. A suitable framework; Game Theory was adopted to support the views presented in the work. The data obtained were discussed, analysed and interpreted using thematic content analysis and statistical modules. The work discovered that the leadership crises in the two dominant parties in Nigeria are affecting democratic delivery and good governance because of the power tussle. The work recommends among others that the parties must develop a culture of internal democracy and ideological focus with a frame for national interest and development.