THE IMPERATIVE OF CHRISTIAN POLITICAL ETHICS IN ELECTORAL PROCESS TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY OF DEMOCRACY IN NIGERIA

Successive governments and administrations in Nigeria have over the years worked assiduously through various electoral reforms towards eradicating electoral malpractice and restoring sanity to the electoral process to enhance democratic sustainability to no appreciable result. Some of the attempted political and institutional solutions range from change in the nomenclature of electoral bodies: (NEC, FEDECO, ECN, NECON, INEC), to change of system of government from the parliamentary to the presidential system of government. Other efforts have been experimentation with different methods of voting namely: open ballot, modified open ballot, open secret ballot to option A4. There has also been a change from manual voters register to electronic register and use of biometrics among others. However, little effort has been made by researchers to explore the possibility of using a religious template namely Christian political ethics as a strategy for the restoration of the electoral process. The thesis argues that previous political approaches that have focused more on institutional, legal and structural reforms are in adequate to eradicate and guarantee a credible electoral process towards democratic sustainability in Nigeria. It is for this reason that this study uses a religious template targeted at moral reforms to address electoral fraud. The following research questions are addressed: how have previous electoral reform efforts fared in restoring the sanctity of the ballot and the electoral process? What level of moral consciousness do political actors have regarding the relationship between politics and morality, between political values and Christian values and what contribution can Christian political ethics offer as a remedy? The study adopts a qualitative and normative approach and through critical content analysis, it examined and assessed data. Data is collected both from primary and secondary sources. A pool of information is drawn from the internet, the print media, and focused group discussion with political actors. The researcher had massive oral and on the spot interviews aside evaluating election observer reports. This methodology is apt since it deals directly with political actors involved in the conduct of election. The major findings of this research are that: Nigerians have divorced, ignored and sidelined ethical principles and values in the practice of democracy; that previous efforts made in terms of reforming the political, institutional and legal aspects of the electoral process to avert this recurring decimal, have not yielded the desired result because such reform attempts have neglected or rather focused less on moral behavioural attitudes of the political actors. The conclusion of the thesis is that, the crisis of governance, and particularly, of electoral malpractice in Nigeria is a crisis of morality and hence, in the absence of political morality or decorum, the quest for credible electoral process and democratic consolidation has become an illusion and has amounted to political instability in Nigeria. The thesis suggests a more fundamental alternative: moral reforms inspired by Christian political ethics to augment institutional reforms