Election Season. Does this have to mean violence?

This past weekend Nigerians voted for their 360 House of Representatives and their 109 Senators. Of course this means violence amongst the people. Two separate bombs exploded in a polling station and a collation center in northeastern Nigeria on Saturday. The first bombing was at a voting station in the city of Maiduguri; no deaths have been reported but their has been a number of injuries. The second explosion was in the same city, but at a collation center. It was not immediately clear how many people died. Many are worried that this is only the beginning of the violence as we move further along in the election process. Also in Maiduguri, a group of young people set a government building on fire. A new election chief promised "free and fair" elections this year, but this years election has already been affected by bombings, assassinations, and other problems which have delayed the vote. Many people are beginning to worry that the government may just take away voting all together.

This shows the possibility of the military possibly stepping up and the Nigerians having some of their democratic rights being taken away. Like we talked about this previous week in class, Nigeria has shown a cycle of military then democratic leader. Could this be in the near future for Nigeria? If the government does decide to get rid of the election all together, what happens next? Nigeria has worked hard for the democratic rights they have now, if they get them taken away haw are the Nigerian people going to react? A whole bunch of questions with answers we will just have to wait to be answered.