Abstract:
Nigeria has earned an appellation for herself as a show case of Africa’s
democracy for several score of years. Ironically, every journey towards such
democratic process/experience had been laden with electoral violence even since
the colonial days. With the rebirth of African liberalism and the wave of
democratic consolidation process that swept across the globe/world in the 1990’s,
electoral violence returned in a more frightening dimension in most African states.
It is, therefore, against this background that this study examined the challenges of
electoral violence in Nigeria with a particular focus on Sokoto state 2009 to 2011.
Methodologically, the study employed quantitative method through the use of both
primary and secondary sauces of data. Thus questionnaire was used as a tool of
data collection while data collected from the documentary (secondary source such
as newspapers, official document and journal) were analyzed. Theoretically, the
elite theory was adopted in this study. The framework seems to link the political
elite and how they gain power and maintains it in the society. Also the theory
shows how elite perpetuate electoral violence for their own selfish interest. The
relevance of the framework is underscored by the fact that in most African
countries, the various conflict that usually develop during democratic process are
mostly of the elite kinds, which in Nigeria are essentially organized around
competing materialistic interests of various sections in the society that soon after,
the political environment was hostile to development and internal struggle for
power
was the absolute focus that led to electoral violence. The study therefore
revealed that cross materialism, weakness of economic foundation of democracy
and the value placed on politics by the political elites are very significant in
explaining the occurrence of this violence. also the strategy of violence in the bid
to achieve selfish ends, mostly through engaging unemployed youths and thugs. in
this respect, the study conducted revealed that the electoral violence has continued
to threaten the democratic experience in Sokoto state and Nigeria at large. This
has resulted in serious loss of lives and properties and brought about political
apathy in the democratic process thereby engendering legitimacy crises as well as
hampering the ability of government to delivers on its promises of democracy can
neither be sustained nor consolidated.
