APPRAISING THE JURIDICAL CHALLENGE TO THE VALIDITY OF ELECTION RESULTS IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Election is a decision-making process by which a people chooses individuals as their representatives to hold public office. Elections sustains the continuity of a democratic system, which gives the people participatory right to select those that their government. The conduct of a free and fair election in a nascent democracy as Nigeria is usually a herculean task. Successive elections in Nigeria have been marred by all manner of malpractices ranging from rigging thuggery to violence leading to maiming and killing of opposition party faithful and the conductors of a given election. These malpractices have consistently defied the effort of electoral regulatory bodies and the security agents, thereby producing a travesty of election results. This paper is aimed at appraising the juridical mechanism in verifying the validity of election results in Nigeria. The paper employed the doctrinal method anchored on the expository of judicial authorities. It was found that there is prevalence of electoral abuses and misconducts largely on account of the absence of electronic voting system, and the dearth of security measures to check such electoral malpractices. Besides, the absence of forensic measures in checkmating election rigging renders the election results a democratic farce. The paper recommends a complete replacement of manual accreditation with the use of smart card reader machine and voting by electronic voting machine. In this way, the sanctity of the electoral process would be assured and the result would reflect the choice of the electorate in keeping with the dictates of democracy.