An analysis of the contradictory judicial tribunal rulings in the post-2015 gubernatorial election: Implication for Nigeria's democracy

The Nigerian judiciary is currently faced with a critical and historical role of killing or saving her democracy through its rulings on petitions arising from the post-2015 gubernatorial elections. This paper focuses on the contradictory post-2015 State Election Tribunal rulings in Nigeria and its implications for Nigeria’s Democracy. Our objective is to examine some of the rulings in order to expose the contradiction therein so as to give vent our claims of existing inequity, miscarriage of justice, as well as its implications for Nigeria’s democratic development. The Systems and Structural Functionalism theories complementarily and respectively provide anchor for the study. Our source of data is secondary but mainly e-generated while analysis is qualitative, descriptive, legalistic, and comparative. The paper posits that a situation where same legal principle operating under similar environments were employed to realize different and conflicting judicial outcomes, is, in fact, a miscarriage of justice, inequity, and tantamount to underdevelopment of Nigeria’s democracy.