Last week, our mentor, friend and great advocate for electoral democracy, Prof Adele Jinadu, celebrated his eightieth birthday, (we share the same birthday), and a lot of us joined him in Lagos for the celebration. The palpable fear among the civil society participants at the event was that Nigeria currently has a reckless political class and judiciary that is ready to beach, (like the proverbial whale), electoral democracy and that all hands must be on deck to defend our hard-earned democratic system.
Browsing: Electoral Democracy
There are ominous signs from the 11th November Off-Cycle Elections and from Election Petition Tribunals that electoral democracy is under serious threat in the country today. The CDD Election Analysis Centre (CDD-EAC) report outlines key findings on the conduct of the elections in Bayelsa State, Imo State and Kogi States. There were extensive incidents related to the abuse of the powers of incumbency, high levels of vote buying by politicians, use of identity markers for political manipulation, orchestrated disinformation campaigns and failure of some institutions such as INEC, political parties and security agencies to perform their duties properly.
For his 79th birthday, friends, colleagues, school mates and mentees of Professor Adele Jinadu convened a colloquium in Abuja on…