IFES Practitioner Brief on Alternative Dispute Resolution in Elections a consultative forum for INEC and political parties. According to the 2015 African Union EOM, although the Political Parties Code of Conduct mandates the IPAC to monitor and regulate parties and to sanction offenders of the Code, it appeared lack the capacity to address code violations. 166 More recently, the EU EOM reported in 2019 that IPAC had held only quarterly meetings with INEC at the national level. 167 In parallel, some experts and academics are calling for introducing ADR in the proceedings of the election court. IFES’s nationwide public opinion surveys found that 40 percent of respondents preferred the ability to engage in ADR over-filing before the courts. 168 Based on the experience of previous elections, Nigerian politicians are unlikely to agree to submit their disputes voluntarily to a person or body outside the established judicial system and to accept the resolution or settlement of those disputes as binding. 169 “[I]t may take some time before these same politicians realize that political contest is not necessarily a zero-sum game.” 170 Other election stakeholders also exhibit reluctance to accept dispute resolution by actors outside the judiciary, particularly INEC. Because many electoral disputes involve INEC—either as a party or an actor close to the dispute—disputants do not perceive the ADR structure within INEC to be fully impartial and objective. Moreover, a distinction should be made regarding the level at which ADR is introduced and the types of disputes it addresses. Willingness to submit disputes to mediation or conciliation during an election may vary among states and depend on whether the election is at the federal or provincial level. A candidate for presidential election may prefer to file directly with the EDR body or the court, whereas a candidate for municipal election may prefer to try mediation with his or her opponent at the local level prior to filing with the central EDR body in the capital. “The Nigerian state is made up of thirty-six states and a federal capital territory and … no two states exhibit the same tendencies with the same potential to produce pre-election political dispute[s].” 171 Therefore, a failed experience of ADR at the central level or for general elections may not reflect ADR outcomes for a municipal race or for a particular county or province, depending on history and ethnic divisions. Additionally, with stronger outreach to political parties and candidates, and with active encouragement from the courts, ADR could still be a positive initiative to reduce the backlog in Nigeria’s courts at the time of elections. As judicially led ADR has proved helpful in other fields of law, its use in election disputes could be explored to ease the backlog of cases in the courts and provide a swift resolution. Several experts and election practitioners in Nigeria have called for increased use of ADR by the judiciary to resolve delays and backlogs in the electoral courts. 172 There were reportedly at least 644 pre-election challenges in the 2019 African Union Election Observation Mission Report: Nigeria 2015, pp. 24-25 European Union election observation mission final report: Nigeria 2019 – General Elections. (2019). https://www.eods.eu/library/nigeria_2019_eu_eom_final_report-web.pdf 168 IFES Nigeria, Sustaining Electoral Reforms In Nigeria (2021-2026): Programming Options Paper (USAID). 169 Bello, A.A. & Aminu, R. (2009). Situating alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in the political sphere: Thoughts on mechanisms for preelection political dispute resolution in Nigeria. https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1369702 170 Ibid. 171 Ibid. 172 Gov. Wike advocates Arbitration, ADR for electoral disputes. (2016, November 3). Business Day. https://businessday.ng/uncategorized/article/gov-wike-advocates-arbitration-and-adr-for-electoral-disputes/; Onyekwere, J. (2017, June 6). LMDC advocates ADR for election disputes. The Guardian. https://guardian.ng/features/lmdc-advocates-adr-for-election-disputes/ 166 167 65