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IMPACT OF POLITICAL THUGGERY ON ELECTORAL VIOLENCE IN KANO STATE

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study

Nigeria has continued to experience a democratic setback in the form of political thuggery and electoral violence that continue to undermine electoral democracy in the country. It is because following the restoration of the civilian rule in the country in 1999 that elections successively have been characterized by organized violence, voter and candidate intimidation, snatching of ballot-boxes, as well as the use of armed groups by political parties and people who fund them. These dilemmas have been of special acuity in Kano State, one of the most politically important of the states in the North of Nigeria, to become a prominent point of reference in learning and policy debate on the subject of democratic governance in West Africa.

Political thuggery is not new to the politics of Nigeria. It can be traced back to the First Republic (19601966), where opposing political parties used youth gangs (also known as party thugs) to disrupt campaigns of opposing parties and intimidate voters (Anifowose, 1982, as cited in Harry and Kalagbor, 2021). Political thuggery took up a more structured and lethal form with the reversion to multiparty democracy with the Fourth Republic in 1999. Mass unemployment, an increase in the use of small arms and the accumulation of enormous political favors in the elective offices were a good environment to meet the systematic use of violence in electoral competition (Fadeyi & Akintola, 2023).

According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), the level of electoral violence in Kano was the worst in the northern part of Nigeria during the prelude to the 2023 general elections with violence between the proponents of opposing parties killing people and creating insecurity that severely affected political activities in the area (ACLED, 2023). This trend is not new to the 2023 cycle, cases of political thuggery had been long-established in Kano over the four years leading up to the election, as thugs acting on behalf of politicians in their own party started fighting each other (Vanguard, 2023). The most extreme example of how political violence may grow beyond an electoral situation into a wider communal disaster is the 2011 post-election violence, which took the lives of at least 800 people across the northern states of the country, including Kano, Kaduna, and Bauchi (Human Rights Watch, 2011, as cited in Harry and Kalagbor, 2021).

The Kano State is strategically located in the political economy of Nigeria. The state has been a place of stiff political rivalry since it is the commercial centre of the north of Nigeria with a population of over fifteen million. The political office in Kano is controlled, which translates into the access to large amounts of financial resources, patronage institutions, and control of the economic regulation factors that elevate the stakes of political competition and heighten incentives to use violence (Ashindorbe, 2018). Youth gangs, motor-park touts and other organized gangs have always been used by political godfathers, chieftains of a party or incumbents in office as a tool of electoral coercion and thus thuggery has been made a structural aspect of the political fabric in Kano rather than an aberrant phenomenon.

The effects of electoral violence in the state of Kano are very extensive and highly documented. On top of the lost lives and damaged property, political thuggery also helps to achieve voter apathy at the mass level. It has been established that only 26.72 per cent of voters, which constitutes 24.9 million out of 93.47 million, turned up to vote in the 2023 elections, a pattern that is directly attributed to the fear of the unknown that comes with political thuggery (Yusuf, 2023). In the case when citizens may consider the voting process as an act that can lead to their death, the very principle of democracy is undermined, and the political power is practically transferred to the hands of those ones who are able to organize their power (Lambe et al., 2023).

The only reason that propelled me to conduct this research is the fact that it is necessary to critically analyze the processes by which political thuggery is converted into electoral violence in Kano State, in order to understand the structural and institutional conditions underpinning this trend, and to generate evidence-based solutions that can help change the situation. This question is pressing due to the fact that the issue continues to be the same after decades of supposed reforms and the further menace it causes to the democratic consolidation in Nigeria.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

With institutional changes that have been brought in by the Electoral Act 2022, implementation of Biometric voter verification by INEC, and numerous assurances by successive governments that electoral processes in Kano State will be peaceful, most electoral cycles have been characterized by political thuggery and electoral violence. The 2011, 2015, 2019, and 2023 general elections in the state were all characterized by a certain level of violence, thuggery, voter suppression, and destruction of electoral materials (INEC, 2024, as cited in Nabiebu, 2022; YIAGA Africa, 2023). The fact that violence persists in various election cycles implies that there is a lack of interventions that may deal with the underlying factors of the issue.

The problem of the electoral violence in Kano provokes significant interests regarding the incentive system that drives political actors to use thugs, the socio-economic fragility that allows young men to mobilize into political foot soldiers and the institutional inefficiency that allows perpetrators to act with impunity. Research has determined that poverty, youth unemployment, political godfatherism, and poor enforcement of the law are some of the key precipitations of electoral violence (Fadeyi & Akintola, 2023; Okolo, Agbai and Boubai, 2022). Nevertheless, there is a lack of theorization on how these factors interact in the Kano context and how they give rise to systematized electoral violence.

In addition, the literature review has shown that there is a gap in the empirical research on the relationship between political thuggery and electoral violence as a case study understands Kano State. Although there are national-level researches, the peculiarities of the political history, social demography, and inter-party relations of Kano are to be considered in the context of the study. The Frontiers study on election security (2025) as well as Ameh-Ogigo (2025) indicate that there is a need to conduct more localized, empirical studies on electoral violence in the most contentious states of Nigeria. This research paper fills that gap.