Elections and electoral systems

What you need to know

• An election is the formal process by which citizens choose their representatives through voting. Suffrage or franchise is the right to vote, and universal adult suffrage means that right belongs to all adults who meet the age qualification, regardless of sex, wealth, literacy or ethnicity. In Nigeria the voting age is eighteen.
• Elections confer legitimacy, give the people a peaceful means of changing their rulers, hold government accountable for its record, educate the electorate during the campaign, and allow the orderly recruitment of political leaders.
• A free and fair election requires an impartial and independent electoral body, an up-to-date voters register, secret balloting, the freedom to campaign without intimidation, equal access to the media, a level playing field for all parties, adequately trained polling officials, an honest count announced publicly, and an effective tribunal to hear disputes.
• The simple majority or first-past-the-post system declares the candidate with the highest number of votes the winner, whether or not that is more than half the votes cast. It is simple, cheap and produces a clear result quickly, but it wastes the votes cast for losing candidates and can give a party a majority of seats on a minority of votes.
• Proportional representation allocates seats to parties in proportion to the votes they win. It is fairer to minorities and wastes fewer votes, but it is complicated to administer, often produces coalitions, and weakens the direct link between a representative and a particular constituency.
• The second ballot or run-off system holds a second round between the leading candidates if no one wins an absolute majority in the first, so that the eventual winner has majority support. Nigeria's presidential rules add a spread requirement: a winner needs both the highest number of votes and at least a quarter of the votes in two-thirds of the states, which is designed to produce a president with support across the whole federation rather than in one region alone.
• Types of election to distinguish: general elections held at the end of a full term; by-elections to fill a seat vacated by death or resignation; primary elections held within a party to select its candidate; run-off elections held when no candidate meets the required threshold; and a referendum or plebiscite, in which the electorate votes directly on a question rather than for a person.
• Delimitation is the division of the country into constituencies of roughly equal population for the purpose of election. Gerrymandering is the deliberate drawing of constituency boundaries to favour one party, and it is a standing accusation in many electoral systems.
• Nigeria's electoral bodies have changed with each political era: the Electoral Commission of Nigeria conducted the pre-independence and early elections, the Federal Electoral Commission ran elections in the First Republic, the Federal Electoral Commission known as FEDECO organised the elections that produced the Second Republic, the National Electoral Commission handled the transition programme of the late 1980s and early 1990s under a different name later in that period, and the Independent National Electoral Commission has conducted elections since the return to civilian rule.
• INEC's functions include registering political parties and monitoring their finances and conventions, compiling and revising the register of voters, delimiting constituencies, conducting federal and state elections other than local government elections, which are run by state independent electoral commissions, announcing results, and prosecuting electoral offences.
• The problems of elections in Nigeria include rigging and falsification of results, snatching and stuffing of ballot boxes, multiple registration and voting, violence and thuggery, vote buying, inflated or inaccurate voters registers, late arrival of materials and officials, partial media coverage, and the heavy cost of litigation after the poll.
• Reforms to cite: the move from an open ballot to a secret ballot, the introduction of the permanent voter's card and card readers, and the later shift to biometric accreditation and electronic transmission of results under the Electoral Act of 2022, which also strengthened the commission's financial autonomy and the legal status of electronic accreditation.
• Election petition tribunals hear disputes arising from elections within defined time limits, with appeals running up through the Court of Appeal and, for presidential and governorship matters, to the Supreme Court. The existence of a quick, binding legal route matters because it channels grievance away from the streets.
• The 12 June 1993 presidential election is normally cited as the clearest case of a credible Nigerian election annulled by those in power. It was widely judged free and fair, Moshood Abiola of the Social Democratic Party was generally believed to have won, and the military government annulled it before a final declaration, which triggered a prolonged political crisis.