Electoral Adjudication and the Disingenious Petitioner: An Explanatory Analysis
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Keywords

electoral adjudication
courts
transitional societies
anti-democratic litigation
democratic decline

Abstract

This article contributes to the discourse on the democracy-enhancing roles of courts in transitional societies and fledgling democracies. It provides an explanatory analysis and legal history of judicial determination of disputes arising from the contested results of Nigeria’s 1979 presidential election in order to elucidate the democracy-enhancing functions of courts in the context of electoral adjudication. The article demonstrates that the courts tailored their adjudicatory efforts towards securing two key democratic outcomes: enabling the successful completion of the 1979 transition programme and facilitating the consolidation of a democratic constitutional order. Although the first normative objective was achieved, the second was considerably undermined by the corrosive effects of anti-democratic litigatory strategies in the electoral arena as well as incendiary attacks in the public sphere on courts and other fledgling democratic institutions. The deleterious strategies of disingenuous petitioners—those who seek to leverage electoral adjudication as a springboard for the attainment of partisan and undemocratic objectives—pose severe normative challenges for the democracy-enhancing roles of courts.
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