SPECIAL REPORT: Why young Nigerians are losing faith in elections

Ahead of the 2023 election, Prodigy Dan, a young Nigerian, believed that high voter turnout would bring the good governance the country desperately needed. So, he encouraged his friends to register for their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs), which were required to vote.

But after enduring long queues and hours at the polls, and eventually seeing his preferred candidate lose, Mr Dan began to question whether participating in elections was worth the effort.

“With how everything emerged in the last election, I feel like there’s one side of me that really doesn’t want to vote (again), because at the end of the day, it might not just count,” he told Campus Reporter.

Voter disengagement among undergraduates

This reluctance to vote is widespread among Nigerian undergraduates, a Campus Reporter survey found.

The Campus Reporter youth participation report surveyed 222 university students across 34 institutions and found that 52.1 per cent of participants were not registered to vote.

The survey conducted weeks before the initial deadline for the voter registration exercise also found that 59 per cent of respondents aged 18 to 21 had not registered to vote.

The study identified a lack of transparency in elections, stringent registration procedures, and limited youth representation in politics as issues affecting young people’s participation.

The single biggest factor identified by 31 per cent of respondents as likely to encourage them to vote was “greater transparency”.

Other top factors cited by respondents include an easier voter registration process, greater youth representation in politics, improved voter education, and reduced election violence.

The findings suggest that many young Nigerians are not necessarily indifferent to elections; rather, they are disillusioned by an electoral process they believe is neither transparent nor capable of translating their votes into meaningful change.

Distrust in electoral system

Emmanuella Balogun, a student at Kwara State University (KWASU), turned 18 earlier this year, when voter registration was still ongoing. But she did not register to vote because she does not trust the electoral commission to conduct transparent elections.

The student said she has observed the prevalence of corruption in previous elections and no longer trusts the process.

“I think my vote is very important in influencing decisions that affect other young people and me. I just don’t think it is acknowledged here in Nigeria,” she said.

Glory Eze, in her mid-twenties, did not vote in the previous elections. Ms Eze describes electoral violence and the failure of elections to translate into good governance as her reasons for not voting.

“People vote, and then nothing changes, and the fact that people go out to vote and are injured. They’re not secure going out to vote,” she said.

Kemisola Aboluwade, who is in her late twenties, said she had also become disillusioned because elected representatives often fail to fulfil their campaign promises.

“It’s so sad that year in, year out, things are getting worse because expectations are not being fulfilled,” Ms Aboluwade said.

Nurudeen Akewushola, a senior journalist at the ICIR, explained that disputes over the 2023 elections discouraged many young people from participating in future elections.

“People expected that they would be seeing the results as they were counting the votes in real time during the 2023 elections,” Mr Akewushola said.

Amina Miango, the Programme Manager of the Accountability Programme at the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID), said that young Nigerians do not trust the electoral process.

“Young people have a suspicious view of the electoral process. They have a bad image of what INEC, the judiciary, and the police stand for, and those are major institutions in any election,” she said.

But Ms Miango stressed that young Nigerians need to be deliberate about playing their part in the elections.

“Young people themselves need to take responsibility,” she said. “If you have registered, take steps to get your PVC when it becomes available. Pay attention to when election day is, listen to the issues and educate yourself about the electoral process.”

Corroborating Ms Miango’s thoughts, the Executive Director of Enough is Enough (EIE) Nigeria, Ufuoma Nnamdi-Udeh, advised young Nigerians not to refrain from participating in elections because of their experiences in previous polls.

“When your preferred candidate does not win, it does not mean you disengage from the process. It is engaging the process that makes it better,” she said.

Ms Nnamdi-Udeh also encouraged young Nigerians to actively seek political power and get into rooms where decisions are made post-elections, rather than passively waiting for current leaders to hand power to them.

“We (youths) live longest with the consequences of bad leadership and bad governance in Nigeria…If you love your life, I think that you should collect your PVC and then come out for elections as well,” she added.

“Politics is expensive, but young people can pool resources to support candidates who demonstrate competence and capacity.”

How election irregularities push young people away

Nigeria’s elections are usually fraught with irregularities that leave voters unsatisfied that their votes counted. The last general election, for instance, witnessed several challenges.

Ahead of the election, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) introduced new technologies that raised voters’ hopes about the credibility and transparency of the election results. However, controversies over the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the INEC Results Viewing (IREV) portal undermined many voters’ confidence in the electoral process.

The IReV, which was supposed to show election results in real time, was down for hours after voting was concluded.

In the post-election report, INEC acknowledged that a key challenge affecting public perception of the election was the failure to upload polling unit results for the presidential election to IReV in real time at the close of the polls on Saturday, 25 February 2023.

The electoral commission said the glitch experienced while uploading scanned images of polling unit presidential election result sheets was due to complexities within the system, which it said were difficult to anticipate and mitigate.

Electoral violence, delays in the provision of materials, and late starting times also reportedly led to the disenfranchisement of thousands of voters.

The survey’s findings come against the backdrop of a steady decline in voter turnout.

In 2011, 53.7 per cent of registered voters turned out at the polls. In 2015, turnout dropped to 43.7 per cent and declined further to 34.75 per cent in 2019.

Despite a record 87 million eligible voters, the 2023 elections saw an all-time low turnout, with only 27 per cent participating. This made it Nigeria’s lowest voter turnout in more than four decades.

These challenges have also shaped how some young Nigerians view future elections.

As of the last general election, young Nigerians aged 18 to 34 made up the largest share of eligible voters, accounting for nearly 40 per cent.

With young Nigerians aged 18 to 34 making up the largest share of eligible voters, accounting for nearly 40 per cent as of the last election, winning their trust in the election process is crucial to reversing the downward trend in voter turnout in the country.

Rebuilding trust requires more than voter registration

INEC’s Deputy Director, Voter Education and Publicity, Paula Iwenjiora, said the electoral commission is working to regain young people’s trust by upgrading its processes to ensure real-time updates of results.

Mrs Iwenjiora also said INEC partners with tertiary institutions to encourage more people to vote and organises INEC clubs in some secondary schools to develop early civic awareness.

She described the digitisation of the voter registration process and the permission to vote using downloaded PVCs as part of INEC’s efforts to increase electoral participation.

“INEC has upgraded and is still upgrading, and we are watching to ensure that what is uploaded on IREV from different polling units corresponds with BVAS records,” she said.

But other electoral stakeholders charged the electoral commission with doing more.

The Africa Division Officer at Yiaga Africa, Aanuoluwapo Kukoyi, said that sensitisation on elections should continue throughout the year because new people turn 18 and new information emerges.

“We should take civic education down all the way to nursery and primary schools. So people understand the process before they become eligible to vote,” Ms Kukoyi said.

She emphasised that the media also needs to extend its political reportage to include consistent civic education.

Ms Nnamdi-Udeh added that Civil Society Organisations and Government Institutions also need to rethink their civic education approaches, involve youths in the end-to-end design of civic education programmes, and focus on programmes that immerse young Nigerians in governance.

“We can have bootcamps, fellowships, and activities where they are not just hearing about the things that they can do, but they also get to do stuff that help them understand the processes, like engaging the National Assembly,” she said.

Young Nigerians Remain Hopeful

While young Nigerians have expressed their distrust in the electoral system and its processes, our interviews show that some have remained resilient and hope that their votes will someday count.

Mr Dan, for instance, would still vote in the 2027 elections despite his distrust of the system.

“To be honest, I’m just going to do it because I feel like it’s my civic duty, right, but based on what I feel as a Nigerian, right, I don’t feel motivated,” he said.

Ms Eze also plans to vote for the first time in 2027, even though she had previously been discouraged by electoral violence and malpractice.

“I’m hopeful that the coming election will be different and will help us achieve a lot,” she said.

Ms Balogun said she will be motivated to participate in future elections if “political parties and their members stop manipulating elections, electoral bodies maintain integrity and fairness, and if there is more enlightenment on registration and voting processes.”

Mr Alli explained that he would be willing to vote if he sees “an electoral system that works and is fair and transparent.”