Introducing the Nigeria Election Violence Tracker
Nigerians are heading to the polls in 2023 amid widespread insecurity. The country currently faces a range of distinct crises, from Boko Haram’s jihadist insurgency in the North East region and criminal, militia, and vigilante violence in the North West and the North Central regions, to separatist campaigns and conflicts over livelihoods and energy resources in the south. In the lead-up to the vote, divisive electoral competition may only exacerbate existing tensions along regional and ethnic lines.
In order to monitor these trends going into the 2023 election, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) has partnered with the Centre for Democracy & Development (CDD) to launch the Nigeria Election Violence Tracker — a dedicated platform for mapping election-related violence and the impact of electoral competition on the country’s multiple concurrent crises.
This new joint project aims to provide policymakers, practitioners, journalists, researchers, and the general public with near real-time information on conflict patterns in Nigeria and an array of easily accessible analytical resources to support violence monitoring and risk mitigation efforts. These resources include:
An interactive dashboard updated weekly with the latest data on reported political violence and election-related incidents, such as attacks on electoral officials and party members
Regular situation updates on political and military developments, including analysis of violence trends in each of Nigeria’s six geopolitical regions
Special reports examining key themes and drivers of violence in Nigeria
Applications of ACLED’s early warning tools to identify potential escalation hotspots
A US-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization established in 2014, ACLED is a disaggregated data collection, analysis, and crisis mapping project. ACLED collects information on the dates, actors, locations, fatalities, and types of all reported political violence and protest events around the world. The ACLED team conducts analysis to describe, explore, and test conflict scenarios, and makes both data and analysis open for free use by the public.
CDD* was established in the United Kingdom in 1997 and subsequently registered in Lagos — Nigeria in 1999 as an independent, not-for-profit, research, training, advocacy, and capacity-building organization. The Center was established to mobilize global opinion and resources for democratic development and provide an independent space to reflect critically on the challenges posed to democratization and development processes in West Africa, and to provide alternatives and best practices to the sustenance of democracy and development in the region. CDD envisions a West Africa that is democratically governed, economically integrated — promoting human security and people-centered development. The mission of the Center is to be the prime catalyst and facilitator for strategic analysis and capacity-building for sustainable democracy and development in the West African sub-region.*
Source: Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project