Seven (7) Reasons for and Causes of Political Apathy in Nigeria

INTRO: Simply put, political apathy means lack of interest in politics, i.e. the activities of the state. More often than not, voter apathy is used interchangeably with political apathy. The interchangeable usage is understandable because voting is the hallmark of political participation, but then, it is careless to do so. As a matter of fact, every voter apathy is political apathy, but not every political apathy is voter apathy. Voter apathy is a subset of political apathy, together with other subsets of political apathy such interest apathy, and information apathy. A voter apathetic person does not go to cast vote in an election, interest apathetic person does not show interest in political activities such as referendum, demonstration, or rally, etc., and information apathetic person does not go for political news, or engage in political discussion. From the foregoing, it is observable that political apathy is the opposite of political participation.

Democracies all over the world consider political apathy as a threat. No democracy is truly a democracy without popular participation. At the face of political apathy, democracy could be anything except the government of the people, by the people, and for the people. The threat which political apathy constitutes against a democracy is laid bare by the analysis of voter turnout in the Nigeria’s 2007 general elections thus:

According to the official INEC Results 2007 Website, the total Voting Age Population (VAP) in 2007 was 131,859,731.  Out  of  this  figure,  61,567,036  people  registered  to  vote  in  the  elections. Regrettably, only 35,397,517 voters actually turned out to vote.  The implication is that more than 70 million eligible voters refused to register while 26,169,519 of registered voters did not turnout for the election. This further implies that only about 35 million people participated in the process that brought in a set of leaders to pilot the affairs of close to 170 million Nigerians. The total percentage of voters‟ turnout for the 2007 general elections stood at 32%. (Amanyie et al., 2015, p. 163).

The implication of this ugly scenario is that the apathetic 96 million Nigerians in the 2007 election were capable changing the choice government of the 35 million Nigerians that voted in the election, and now, the apathy of the majority allowed the choice of the minority to hold sway. To make matters worse, the apathetic population in Nigeria are the middle-class, the lettered, the informed; you think of the professors, the doctors, the civil servants, and the likes, while the politically active population include commercial drivers, farmers, market women, artisans, and commercial motorcyclists etc., i.e. people who are largely uninformed or misinformed. The question here now is why do we have the problem of political apathy in Nigeria? 

The reasons for or causes of political apathy in Nigeria are as follows:

1. Political Culture: The long military rule in Nigeria has been identified to have caused serious passivity to political affairs among Nigerians. The military ruled with decrees and edicts, and the people could not but obey. Now, when the law making powers returned to the people in 1999, many a Nigerians have already, and very regrettable so, grown very unconcerned about political affairs. A study on the political culture in Nigeria would find Nigerians mostly under the Almond and Verba’s parochial, and subject political culture, and very fewer Nigerians in the participant political culture.      
2. Electoral Malpractice: The conduct of elections in Nigeria since the Fourth Republic have been marred with electoral irregularities such as vote buying, ballot box snatching, underage voting and outright falsification of electoral results.  There were other institutional and technical hitches from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and the use of electoral electronic devices such as card readers respectively. All these grossly erode the confidence of voters in the electoral process so that the popular opinion is that votes don’t count, and therefore voting is bootless. At a stage in 2007 general election in Nigeria, Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua who won the presidential election openly admitted that the election which brought him into power was marred with irregularities. Generally speaking, people have their say, while the elites have their way in elections in Nigeria.                                                                                                                                
   
3. Insecurity: The increasing spate of insecurity in Nigeria’s political space has left many voters to avoid politics. In the North East where Boko Haram terrorism is rampant, residents have been attacked and forced out of their residences so that survival instead of political participation is their priority. In the South East, on many occasions, the Independent Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) have placed outright ban on elections, and in many instances walked the talk by attacking and killing voters and electoral officers during elections. Breakout of electoral violence before, during or after elections have also been well-documented in Nigeria. There were scary instances of thuggery. The cumulative effect of all these issues of insecurity rendered elections and electioneering in Nigeria a macabre dance which the dancers are only those who want to die. Now, observations have shown that many Nigerians don’t want to die.                                   
   
4. Lack of Effective Voter Education: In this case, the mass media, political parties, religious institutions, schools and orientation agencies are to be blamed. The preponderance of political apathy among the Nigerian populace casts aspersion on their political sensitization functions. There are things they are not doing right, be it in curriculum by the schools, or the medium of communication by the mass media, orientation agencies, and political parties, and or in the content of the message by all of the institutions of political socialization. There is the need for effective voter education to reawaken into consciousness of the people that the power to hire and fire politically, is now in their hands, that militarism of the old days have come and gone. The Nigerian people need to be reoriented that it is the responsibility of government to provide for security, water supply, electricity, and the likes, which many Nigerians provide for themselves today, and that the only way to get a reluctant government to do those things is by active political participation.                                    
   
5. There is political apathy in Nigeria because of pervasive corruption among the political elites. Corruption in Nigeria is near ubiquitous. David Cameron spoke the obvious when he said that Nigeria is fantastically corrupt. It is easier to build castle in the air than to point out one political elite in Nigeria that is not corrupt. Even the non-political elites are potential looters. In a case where one manages to point out a political elite with clean record, such a person would still be found culpable of condoning corruption under his or her very nose. The pervasive corruption among political elites creates the feeling of “what difference would it make to vote?” given that the candidates on offer are much of a muchness, i.e. no distinction.                                                                                            
   
6. Lack of Strict Political Ideology among the Political Parties. One of the motivations for political participation is to get favourable governmental socio-economic and political policies. Normally, political parties offer the electorates ideological options for the governance of the state, in which there are political parties that have either capitalist or socialist leaning. People support political parties they consider to be in alignment with their ideological preference. The lack of ideology among political parties in Nigeria makes it that there is no difference whatsoever when any of the political parties wins an election in Nigeria. This sheer lack of ideology by Nigerian political parties is indicated by the incessant defections by the politicians from one political party to another, hence, people don’t bother to vote. Sarcastically, someone said that the ideology of Nigerian political parties is "no ideology".                                                                       
7. Nigeria’s Lag in Adopting Electoral Technologies. The electoral process in Nigeria is several notches below the advancements in electoral technologies as it still requires physical presence of the voter at the polling units in order to cast votes, and Nigerians are disappointed. It is noteworthy that today, Nigerians get certificate trainings online, buy and sell online, and hold meetings online. Now, why would they not be able to vote online? More so, Nigeria ranks high among the countries that embraced the Internet the most, so that now, Nigerians are more available online than offline. A significant number of Nigerians would not want to take the pains of going to the polling units to cast their votes, and ordinarily would have done it online. Participation in politics has already improved online in Nigeria except the missing link which is online balloting.