'Lai Olurode l The Commission should acquire adequate legal powers to prosecute electoral offenders. l Deployment of security and election personnel should be done based only on informed security report targeted at ensuring the safety or integrity of the officers. l There is the need to begin to institutionalize security mapping to identify flash points to help in effective deployment of security during elections. l Polling units should be sanitized and decentralized to ensure effective security coverage. Congestion of several polling units in one location should be discouraged. l There is need to have INEC intelligence unit to advise the commission and compare notes with the operations of other security agencies. l There is need for synergy and coordination with respect to financing and logistics of election. The conclusions to this work are contained in chapter ten wherein I deal with the frightening specter of democratic reversals and the danger of slipping into the abyss. There are clear signs in this direction as had happened in Mali and Cote d'Ivoire. Recent by elections in Nigeria are a source of concern for election managers and security experts. How can this potential reversal be mitigated? The resilience of our democratic institutions are not inelasticand must not be taken for granted. 18 ELECTION SECURITY IN NIGERIA: MATTERS ARISING Chapter Two ASSESSMENT OF 2011 ELECTIONS IN VIEW OF RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE 2010 WORKSHOP Lancelot Anyanya 2.1 Introduction In the bitter contest for political power brokered by periodic elections, even the most mature democracies are sometimes seriously challenged in handling their fallouts. In emerging or transition democracies, the fallouts of electoral contests sometimes develop violent manifestations with negative consequences that go as far as threatening the stability of those societies. From its very beginning, before independence in 1960, electoral violence has remained an almost recurring feature in Nigeria's democratic and electoral narrative. But even in a country where the ugly specter of electoral violence is anticipated and prepared for, the violence that engulfed parts of Nigeria in the aftermath of the 2011 elections were undeniably unprecedented. The scale and severity of the violence severely tasked a national security community that had anticipated and prepared for the possibility of post-election violence. It has even been suggested that, had the violence not been localized to specific parts of the country, the outcome might have been dramatically ELECTION SECURITY IN NIGERIA: MATTERS ARISING 19