Electoral Violence in Nigeria: Insights From Off-Cycle Subnational Elections

Abstract

There is a popular assumption that off-cycle subnational elections should be better governed and more peaceful than general elections. This position is premised on the notion that limited geographical and demographical scope of such elections offers the national electoral body, security agencies and other key actors in electoral governance the opportunities to concentrate resources and energies in a given jurisdiction for maximum efficiencies. These have encouraged advocacy to unbundle the Electoral Management Body, namely the Independent National Electoral Commission by decentralising electoral governance. However, this assumption has not been subjected to adequate academic scrutiny. This study, therefore, examines comparatively, records of violence in off-cycle subnational elections conducted in Edo, Kogi and Ondo States between 2019 and 2020, and those of Nigeria’s 2019 general elections. The study is descriptive by design, with data largely extracted from Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project and analysed using mixed method.