Influence of electoral strategies of the people's democratic party on credibility of 2011 presidential election in Kaduna, Nigeria

The study focused on the influence of electoral strategies of the People's Democratic Party (PDP) on the credibility of the 2011 presidential election in Kaduna, Nigeria. Post-independence presidential elections conducted in Nigeria were flawed in terms of processes, conduct and management. The elections lacked credibility because of the manipulative electoral strategies of incumbent parties. In the fourth republic, particularly during the presidential election in 1999, 2003, and 2007, reports of foreign and local election observers showed a lack of credibility and flawed process. This is because the characteristics of a credible election are supposed to be a proof of the high level of election integrity characterized by adequate freedom for the electorates and contestants, the rights of all qualified adults to vote, one man one vote, the absence of intimidation of voters and contestants, peaceful conduct and transparent management of election amongst other factors were absent. However, the reports of foreign and local election observers, such as European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM), International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute (NDI), Project 2011 Swift Count, to name a few, indicate that the conduct, process and management of the 2011 presidential election met the international electoral best practices when compared to 1999, 2003, and 2007 elections. Nevertheless, contrary to election observers' reports, the opposition, i.e., the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), protested that the 2011 presidential election and its outcome also were a product of PDP flawed and manipulated election as the election was heavily rigged just like the election in 1999, 2003, and 2007. The present study was conducted to achieve three objectives: (a) to investigate the electoral strategies of PDP during the 2011 presidential election in Kaduna, Nigeria, (b) to examine the influences of electoral strategies of PDP on the credibility of the 2011 presidential election in Kaduna, Nigeria, and (c) to investigate the credibility of the electoral process during the 2011 presidential election in Kaduna Nigeria. A qualitative research approach was adopted to achieve the objectives, and data were collected from primary and secondary sources. The research method was a case study focusing on Kaduna as a single case. The data were collected through face-to-face interviews. Twelve semi-structured questions divided into three sections based on the three research questions were asked. A sample of twenty-three key informants were drawn at the point of reaching saturation out of the total population interviewed. The informants were drawn from the 2011 election stakeholders through a purposive sampling technique. The data collected were manually analyzed through a thematic analysis adopted as the analytical tool by searching for patterns, codes, and themes. These were achieved through manual transcription, manual sorting, and the raw data coding through Microsoft Word documents. The first objective's findings include financial and economic strategies (money, economic, social, and food incentive politics), demographic and geographical strategies, socio-political strategies, regimes performance and political/campaign promises, and multi-facet strategies. The findings for objective two comprise the influence of strategies on electoral integrity, the influence of strategies on political and electoral corruption, the influence of strategies on voters' free-will, the influence of strategies on religious harmony and, finally, the influence of strategies on electoral protest and violence. The third objective's findings reveal that the election processes include a pre-election stage that comprises a campaign and electioneering period. Secondly, the election process on the voting day is made up of accreditation and voting, sorting out and counting of votes, and the accessibility and freedom of parties in vote’s collation. Although the findings reveal that the process at polling units was clean, open, transparent, free, fair, and credible, the stages were characterized by intimidation of opposition parties in the pre-election campaign period and the denial of media access to opposition parties, as well as a widespread violation of the process in the pre-voting and election day through open sharing of money to prospective voters in and around the polling units by the PDP supporters. In conclusion, the major strategies specifically used by PDP during the 2011 presidential election were the vote-buying, the sharing of money, and the use of economic, social and food incentives on voters. Others were political corruption, ethno-religious crisis, and post-electoral protest and violence that influenced the election. Lastly, the electoral process showed a lack of credibility in terms of the use of money on voters before and on the voting day that invariably lured voters to PDP. The inducement of voters negatively influenced the will of the electorates and, more importantly, the influence of the money hurt the integrity of the election. The present study's findings show variations of the reports of the election observers on the 2011 presidential election. The variation occurred because the official reports of the election observers for the 2011 presidential election were aggregate reports of all the thirty-six states and the Federal Capital Territory in Nigeria. In contrast, the findings of the present study emanate from an in-depth investigation in Kaduna. In view of this, the present study closed the gap in previous studies over the credibility problem of the 2011 presidential election concerning the electoral strategies of PDP in Kaduna Nigeria in particular.

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