OPPOSITION POLITICS AND ELECTORAL DEMOCRACY IN NIGERIA

A STUDY OF THE 2019 GENERAL ELECTIONS

Abstract

Precisely, democracy is seen as a political system that is characterized by periodic and free elections in which politicians organized into political parties, engage themselves in competitive polls to form government. After most of the recent elections, new types of nondemocratic government have come to the fore, competitive authoritarian regimes, in which autocrats submit to meaningful multiparty elections but engage in serious democratic abuse. These regimes have formal democratic institutions, but their leaders circumvent and ignore them so often that they cannot be described as democratic. This study seeks to assess and evaluate the impact of electoral democracy in Nigeria, especially in terms of the performance of the Opposition in 2019 general election, and make a projection regarding a vibrant democratic space that will go beyond routine elections to speak to the issues preoccupying the Nigerian masses. The study adopted the pluralist theory for its framework of analysis and relied on documentary method of data collection. In the analysis of data, the paper relied on the use of qualitative-descriptive tool and content analysis. It was established that there is deficiencies in the intellectual and ideological capacities of political leaders that often impact on the choices made by political parties and hence on the desire to extend a stay in office, despite the efforts of the opposition. The paper recommended among others that, democratic principles should be strictly adhered to by political parties during election, and that political parties should be embedded on shifting from political predatory metaphors of grievance, greed, forgery and griotism to embrace a new political patriotic dispensation of values, views, genuineness and vision.