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For the first time a coalition of diverse political parties sank their differences and coalesced into a mega party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) with the sole aim of pushing the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) out of Aso Rock, the Presidential villa.
Faced with a very serious challenge for the first time in 16 years, the PDP has come out in full force countering the moves of the APC and wooing the electorate.
Thus, the APC and PDP's claims and counter-claims, accusations and counter-accusations, ahead of the elections, have heated up the polity leading to palpable fears of violence before, during and after polls.
The fears dove-tailed into the debate on whether or not the military should be deployed for the polls. A Lagos Federal High Court, on Monday, ruled that it is unconstitutional to deploy the military to monitor elections, which it held is the function of the police. The ruling generated further controversies with some saying that the ruling is in order while others countered that the President has the power to deploy the military to ensure security during the exercises.
All said and done, the polity is turbo-charged for what may pass as the most hotly contested and closest elections in Nigeria's democratic history. And the outcome will show whether democracy has been consolidated or otherwise.
Today's election is the 10th in the series of general elections the country has held since 1959.
It is also the fifth since the restoration of democracy in 1999 after a long spell of military rule.
The history of general elections in Nigeria, pre-dated the country's independence, given that polls had been held at regional levels before the nation attained independence from Britain on October 1, 1960.
Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and Alhaji Ahmadu Bello
Since 1959 federal elections, presidential polls were held in the following years: 1964/1965, 1979, 1983, 1993, 1999, 2003, 2007 and 2011.
But for the 1959 exercise that was held during colonial administration, the elections of 1979, 1993 and 1999 were conducted by military regimes, while the 1964/65, 2003, 2007 and 2011 took place during civilian administrations.
Like today's exercise, issues that border on crisis of succession, credibility of the electoral process and volatile political climate, remarkably shaped the...