Voter Sensitization and Electoral Participation in Nigeria: The 2015 General Election in Perspective

Summary

The research on political alienation and electoral participation in Nigeria, using the 2015 general election as a reference point gave a lot of insights on the problems affecting Nigeria democracy and electoral process. On the issue of Nigeria’s democracy, a large population of the people have not understand the political process, most of them do not informed and as such it affects the choices they make from time to time. The people are not carried along, i.e. there is no participant political lecture that makes the people to contribute and have impact on the political process at best they are mere passive participant in the electoral process. 67 Electoral violence is one of the deciding factors if the people will come out enmass to vote or not. The 2007, 2011 general election was married with violence and this affected the number of turnout of persons in the 2015 elections. The extent to which people are xxx about coming out to vote in any elections is consequent upon the impact of previous policies and programmes of the government on the lives of the people, i.e. how many persons have been removed from the poverty line, how many jobs have been created, what is the business environment like? These are the indices of the dividends of democracy, once all these variables are absent, the people see election as mere ritual and as such they are skeptical and cynical about the credibility of the elections. Many of the respondents were of the opinion that electoral violence, lack of awareness of the various political parties and their manifestoes are the reasons for the lack of participation of the citizens on the electoral process. In the same vein, a large majority of the respondents were of the opinion that the policies of the government has not improved upon the lives of the people, hence the apathy and unwillingness to participate in elections.