Nigeria’s 2015 Presidential Election: Will there be Large-scale Violence?
Since 2010, northern Nigeria has been racked by a violent Islamist insurgency that was exacerbated by the 2011 presidential contest, which favored incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan. Despite being generally acclaimed as free and fair, the results of that election were strongly disputed in northern Nigeria, sparking violent post-election protests across 12 northern states. Apart from the Boko Haram insurgency and the 2011 post-election violence in northern Nigeria, disagreements over President Jonathan’s eligibility for re-election and the legitimacy of his regime have produced high-profile defections from his ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to the rival All Progressives Congress (APC), as well as incendiary comments that suggest that the 2015 presidential election may produce violence unprecedented in the history of elections in Nigeria. Read the full report.
