Nigeria’s 2011 elections marked a watershed in the country’s democracy.
Before then elections conducted there had been marred by controversy, with
monitors and observers who assessed the quality of elections consistently
questioning their integrity. The 2011 elections, however, received resounding
approval as an improvement. This article examines the monitoring and
observation by international and local groups of the 2011 elections. It
underlines the qualified credibility of the elections considering the level of
irregularities and violence noted by observers and monitors and argues that
the declaration of the elections as credible must not detract from the need to
be mindful of their inadequacies if Nigeria is to reap the benefit of election
monitoring and observation in future elections.