MANAGING INTRA-PARTY CONFLICTS IN NIGERIA THROUGH MEDIATIVE-CONCILIATION APPROACHES

Abstract

There is a growing interest among scholars and practitioners of alternative dispute resolution(ADR) mechanisms intheir application to a wide range of social conflict situations and settings including intraparty. There is presently no legal framework in existence either by the 1999 Nigerian Constitution (as amended) or the Electoral Act 2022(as amended) obligating political parties to use any of the ADR processes to address their myriad of internal crises which invariably has left the court system as the chief arbiter and adjudicator of electoral and political disputes peaking with the conduct of party primaries for the nomination of candidates.Practically all the major political parties have witnessed one form of dysfunctional internal crisis or other since 1999 and there is no proven method for successfully resolving such disputes without leaving bitter outcomes among the disputants as supported by ourliterature.This qualitative exploratory paper aims to contribute to peacebuilding efforts of political parties as aggregators of interestsusing homegrown Electoral Alternative Dispute Resolution(EADR) approach known as mediative-conciliation to manage intra party disputes and conflicts in Nigeria. Primary data for the study was collected from information-rich participants’ responses to unstructured questionnaire while secondary data was from documents and triangulated from other sources using the Electoral Justice System (EJS) as our theoretical framework. Our findings reveal an urgent need to main stream EADR into the electoral law, the constitutions, and operations of the political parties. A key recommendation is for a reform of the electoral legal framework mandating EADR in the Electoral Act and combined with the current Multi-Door Courthouse mechanisms into the structure, organisation, and operations of political parties going forward.