Archivi.ng, on July 4, 2026, announced the launch of the Election Context Project (ECP), a long-term initiative to help Nigerians understand elections through historical context, data, storytelling, and public-interest research.

Nigeria conducts elections regularly, but public understanding of them is fragmented and disconnected from history. Every electoral cycle generates vast information, analysis, and debate, but much of it disappears once the votes are counted.

The result is a recurring deficit of electoral memory. Citizens encounter political events without the context to understand them. Journalists rebuild historical knowledge each election season. Civic organisations and researchers repeatedly reconstruct datasets and timelines. Public conversations become vulnerable to misinformation and historical amnesia.

The Election Context Project addresses this gap by building the contextual layer for Nigerian elections.

Rather than focusing on election-day results alone, it explains the systems, institutions, incentives, and political decisions that shape electoral outcomes long before votes are cast and long after they are counted.

“Election results tell us who won,” said Fu’ad Lawal, co-founder and Executive Director of Archivi.ng. “Context helps us understand why. Our goal is to make Nigerian elections easier to understand by connecting today’s events to the historical patterns that produced them.”

The project serves citizens, journalists, researchers, election observers, and civil society organisations across Nigeria’s electoral ecosystem.

The ECP will operate through interconnected components: original editorial work, historical explainers, data-led investigations, visual storytelling, public education, and research resources designed to remain useful beyond any single election cycle.

The project will initially focus on presidential and gubernatorial elections from 1999 to 2023, drawing on earlier periods where they add context.

In the months leading up to the 2027 general elections, the project will publish public-interest resources examining candidate selection, party structures, electoral institutions, voter behaviour, political violence, turnout patterns, zoning arrangements, campaign dynamics, and the long-term evolution of Nigerian democracy.

An Editorial Board of experts in elections, research, civic advocacy, and journalism will guide the project. These include Stanley Achonu, Governance Consultant; Feyi Fawehinmi, Accountant and Author; Sa’eed Husaini, CDD West Africa Research Fellow; Cynthia Mbamalu, Director of Programmes, YIAGA Africa; Mayowa Tijani, Editor-At-Large, The Cable; and Nabilah Usman, General Manager, Radio Now.

The Election Context Project extends Archivi.ng’s mission of preserving, organising, and interpreting Nigerian historical material into one of the country’s most consequential public arenas: elections.

By creating a permanent repository of electoral knowledge, Archivi.ng aims to strengthen public understanding, improve democratic literacy, and ensure that each election leaves behind a richer body of knowledge than the one before it.

For more information, visit the Election Context Project.

About Archivi.ng

Archivi.ng is a Nigerian public history organisation dedicated to preserving, organising, and interpreting historical records and cultural memory. Through archival preservation, research, storytelling, and public-interest projects, Archivi.ng works to make Nigeria’s past more accessible, understandable, and useful for contemporary audiences.

For enquiries, contact

Samson Toromade

samson@archivi.ng