Impact of Voter Education on Curbing Electoral Violence in Nigeria

Abstract

Preventing violence prevalent in democratic elections globally has remained a concern to world governments, election observation groups, electoral management bodies, civil society organisations, and academia. This is because a peaceful electoral process strengthens democracy, enhances election credibility, and boosts the legitimacy of the elected government. Voter education (VE) provides the potential voters with basic information about the significance and time of voting, the location of voting centres, how to exercise their voting rights, and measures put in place to secure votes, voters, electoral observers, party agents, and electoral officials, etc. in the bid to achieve a credible and peaceful election. However, despite several current legal and institutional safeguards, violence has been anathema to Nigeria's electoral trajectory from the start of the Fourth Republic. This study assessed the impact of voter education as a practical method for reducing violence in Nigeria's post-2019 elections, where mixed methods of data were adopted. Also, simple random and purposive sampling techniques were employed to harvest data from 389 respondents. The study was analysed using ordinal regression analysis. The study found that information dissemination impacted the reduction of the electoral violence significantly, while problem identification and communitybased processes did not impact the electoral violence significantly.