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Voters’ Behaviour And The 2015 General Election Process In Nigeria
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
Since
the return to civil rule on 29 May 1999, Nigeria has held five general
elections, apart from sundry re-run elections and local government polls
conducted by the electoral body. Out of the five general elections
conducted, only the 2015 general election met both the local and
international standard. The disturbing trend is that each general
election was worse than the preceding one (2003 was worse than 1999; and
2007 was worse than 2003). This trend shows that Nigeria is faring very
badly at each passing election as nobody can talk of consolidating
democracy in an environment characterized by electoral violence,
electoral fraud, ethnic loyalty, party affiliation and religious
sentiments.
Conducting a free and fair election is vital to the
growth and development of any democratic process. Also, an average
Nigerian voter is interested in immediate pecuniary or material rewards,
and will easily trade off his votes when appropriately induced. This
can be explained by the crippling poverty facing the people in
the absence of government’s provision of the basic amenities
required for decent living, as well as their justified distrust of the
political leaders (Ebegbulem, 2011).
Indeed, one major element of
electoral process is that election must be conducted in a free and fair
atmosphere, while electoral results must reflect the wishes of
the people. Nigeria’s experience in this regard had since
independence been contrary to this expectation. This is because
previous and present electoral bodies had conducted elections in
a way that favoured the ruling political parties through poor
planning, the device of excluding electorates from voting in places
considered to be the strongholds of opposition, inadequate supply of
voting materials, and late arrival of electoral officers to polling
stations.
Conventionally, voting is the fulcrum of political
participation in liberal democracies. Voters’ behaviour can explain the
raison de’tre for decision making by the electorate. Goldman (1966)
submits that inferences and predictions about behaviour concerning a
voting decision involves certain factors that are not limited to gender,
race, culture, or religion. For him also key public influences include
the role of emotions, political socialization, tolerance of diversity of
political views and the media. Essentially, the effect of these
influences on voting behaviour can best be understood through proper
scrutiny on the formation of attitude, beliefs, schema, knowledge
structures and the practice of information processing. Survey from
different countries indicate that people are generally happier in
individualistic cultures where they have rights such as the right to
vote (Diener, 2000).
In a multilingual, multi-cultural democratic
setting like Nigeria, voting behaviour is dictated by a plethora of
complex issues. This stems from the fact that it involves an analysis of
individual psychological processes vis-à-vis perception, emotion, and
motivation and to a large extent, their relation to political action as
well as of institutional patterns, such as the communication process and
their impacts on elections. In national elections, it is usually the
norm that people vote based on their political beliefs. However,
considering the fact that a voter is a rational creature in the
philosophical sense of the term, he is not so rational; in the realms of
his economic or political behavior (Joseph, 2015).
Voter behaviour
to this extent displays the astounding factor that the behaviour of man
is influenced by several irrational factors and pressure group in
invoking religious and communal sentiments, influence of money or
charismatic personality of a leader and a host of other irrational
forces on the minds of the voter.
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]Nigeria is one of the most ethnicallyand religiously diverse country in Africa, and over time ethnic and religious considerationshave been built into the electoral system itself. These factors were overly observed in the 2015 general elections, Monitor (2015)reports that on a geo-political zone basis, the South-Southhad the greatest voter turnout with 59% closely followed bythe North-West with 54%. The South-West had the lowestturnout in the country with just 37%. This study investigated votersà ... Continue reading---
