Election offences manifest in all forms of malpractices such as rigging, thuggery, vote buying, often times culminating in violence. These offences had remained an albatross in the Nigerian electoral journeys from the colonial period through the first republic in 1960 till 1999 when Nigerians started witnessing an untruncated democratic journey in her electoral history. Nigeria's elections have always been marred by electoral malpractices and violence thereby shortchanging the citizens' will and mandate expressed during elections. The general aim of this paper is to evaluate the impact of electoral violence and malpractices on the outcome of elections in Nigeria while the specific objective is to determine the solutions to this malaise for a better democracy based on popular elections in the country. The paper adopts a theoretical, doctrinal and conceptual method of research and utilizes Nigeria's electoral laws, court decisions, as well as legislations criminalizing electoral malpractice and violence so as to arrive at a balanced and objective analysis. The paper found, among other things, that the electoral violence, thuggery and other malpractices have not abated since the new democratic culture in 1999 till date as malpractices and violence have been widely reported in all the States of the Federation in virtually all the elections from Local Government Council to Presidential elections. It is worrisome, even as the courts have showed that elections in Nigerians are a very emotional and quarrelsome matter. It is a matter where Nigerians fight to finish. In spite of its enactment into the Nigerian Electoral Laws, malpractices and violence have not abated, but rather increased. The paper therefore recommends the setting up of Constitutional or Electoral Offences Court to try and punish perpetrators of election malpractices and violence. In addition, the legislature should strengthen the provisions relating to malpractices
For long time now, there have been intense debates among scholars and legal practitioners on the value of fundamental rights provisions in Nigerian laws to citizens who are impoverished on one hand by wide margin of classes in Nigeria and on the other hand because of the Nigeria's economy. In search for answer to above debates, this paper sets to carry out a surgical diagnosis on the place of poverty in the enforcement of fundamental rights in Nigeria. The research method is doctrinally and conceptually utilized the provisions of national and international legal instruments, decisions of courts as well as contributions of scholars in books and journals to evaluate and analyze the subject matter. The paper discovered that poverty among most Nigerians has posed anti-clock movement on the enforcement of fundamental rights in Nigeria. It was based on this that we made our recommendations which include the making of socioeconomic rights justiciable in Nigerian courts.
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