Trend of low voter turnout continues in Nigerian elections

Nigerians’ reluctance to vote during elections has been well-documented, but the challenge took a turn for the worse last weekend when citizens turned out to vote for federal lawmakers and the president in an exercise watched closely around the world.

Since returning to democratic rule in 1999, Nigeria has enjoyed uninterrupted democracy, the first period since the country’s independence in 1960. Up to 93 million people in Africa’s most populous country and largest economy are registered to vote before the 2023 elections. It is the first leg of the seventh general election since the end of the military government in 1999.

In the build-up to the election, the combination of a severe cash crisis as well as the persistent shortage of petrol, ensured that Nigerians, especially the youth, showed strong interest in participating in the 2023 elections.

However, the turnout was low, the lowest since Nigeria’s independence. In 36 states, less than half of the eligible population voted, and no state had a voter turnout of more than 40 percent.

In the three largest states based on voter registration – Lagos, Kano and Kali – less than a third of the population is eligible to vote. Rivers turnout was shy of 15.6 percent, the lowest in the country, despite producing more votes in the last election.

Overall, the national turnout was 29 percent; No election has the lowest participation rate in the sixty years of Nigeria’s independence. Out of 93.4 million registered voters this year, 87.2 million people collected their Permanent Voter Card and the number of actual voters on election day was only 24.9 million. No 9 million people voted for President Bola Tinubu who will now rule over 220 million Nigerians.

Since 2011, voter turnout has steadily declined.

Before 2023, the 2019 election recorded the lowest voter turnout of 34.75 percent. In 2019, a scant 28.6 million votes were cast despite 82 million eligible voters. The winner, President Muhammadu Buhari, was re-elected with more than 15 million votes in a country of more than 200 million citizens. More than half of the country’s population is in the voting age range.

The 2019 rate was the lowest in all recent elections held on the African continent. Data collected by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (I-IDEA), an intergovernmental organization that supports sustainable democracy around the world, shows that the number of voters in the election is the second lowest in the history of elections held in the countries Africa, and that is only slightly better than the 32.3 percent recorded in Zimbabwe’s 1996 presidential election.

This means that Nigeria’s 2023 presidential election has the worst turnout in Africa.

Several factors have been attributed to low voter turnout in Nigerian elections. These include voter apathy and poor economic conditions. PREMIUM TIMES also reported how the electoral commission, INEC, contribute to low voter turnout in the last election through the deployment of officials and final materials to polling units.

Overall, voter apathy is a major challenge in Nigeria’s democracy. There is a worrying trend of disinterest or indifference to the electoral and democratic process.

Commenting on the development, Idayat Hassan, director of the Center for Democracy and Development (CDD) said the low participation could be due to the failure of democracy to produce development.

“The failure of democracy to produce development has made many disinterested in participating in elections,” he said, adding that “violence and voter suppression also played a big role in reducing voter turnout.”

In 1999, the turnout was 52.3 percent. Officially, it rose to 69 percent in 2003; and has fallen since then, first to 57.5 percent in 2007; then it became 53.7 percent in 2011; before dropping to 43.7 percent in 2015.

In the 1999 elections, 30.2 million people out of 57.9 million registered citizens actually voted. Both the number of registered voters and the number of votes cast increased in the 2003 elections, with 42 million out of 60.8 million Nigerians registered to vote (69 percent of the electorate). The 2003 election still had the highest participation rate since the end of military rule in 1999.

In 2007, although the number of registered voters increased to 61.5 million, the total number of votes cast dropped significantly to 35.3 million (57.5 percent of the total electorate). Registered voters and total votes rose to 73.5 and 39.4 in 2011. Then the figures dropped to 67.4 million and 29.4 million in 2015.

This figure puts Nigeria among the 10 countries with the lowest number of voters in the world. Rwanda recorded at 98.15 percent voter turnout in 2017, the highest in the world.

“These dwindling numbers highlight how Nigerian politics and state institutions continue to exclude rather than include,” said Leena Hoffmann, associate fellow of the Africa Program at Chatham House London.

Ms Hassan of the CDD called on INEC to improve its election management and start an audit of the voter register. “Nigeria does not have a voter registration audit, an audit that takes dead people and all ineligible voters out of the system.”

“The fact that the percentage of Nigerians who are unable to participate in elections is a matter of concern and may reflect their disillusionment with their ability to shape a more democratic society,” he said.

Nigeria will hold gubernatorial elections on March 11.

The number of gubernatorial elections varies across states in Nigeria. data from the 2019 gubernatorial elections show that many states recorded low voter turnout in the elections.

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Turnout rates vary from above 50 percent in Borno, Jigawa, Katsina, and Taraba to a worrying 18 percent in Lagos State, the country’s most cosmopolitan city.

Only a few elections have a higher percentage. Some recent elections were recorded as low as 3 and 8 percent number of voters.

Only 10 percent of voters are eligible to vote for Governor Charles Soludo of Anambra in 2021.