Introduction: Barring
unforeseen circumstances, Presidential and
National Assembly elections in Nigeria will hold across 109 senatorial
districts and 360 federal constituencies on Saturday, February 25, 2023.
Similarly, gubernatorial and State Assembly elections is slated to take place
two weeks after the presidential election in 28 states and 993
state constituencies
on Saturday, March 11, 2023. Three off-cycle [1] governorship elections for Bayelsa, Imo and Kogi
states, will hold same day, Saturday, 11 November, 2023. It is interesting to
note that about 48 million [2] out of the 93.5 million
eligible voters in Nigeria are youths. The implication of this is that if
majority of youths exercise their franchise, they might flip the outcome of the
general election. Election can be likened warfare in Nigeria and the situation is
not different preparatory to the 2023 general elections. If anything, the
tension, uncertainty have escalated. Synonymous with every election season in
Nigeria, governance is now relegated to the back seat while ethno-religious
politicking, political brinkmanship, intolerance, gaslighting, dog-whistling,
disinformation seems to have taken the front seat. This election security threat assessment was carried out
using publicly available information (PAI), open source intelligence (OSINT) to
glean and forecast likely multidimensional or hybrid
election security threats in Nigeria such as internecine conflicts, cybersecurity challenges, logistics and legal issues that
could hinder the 2023 general elections.
