Representative Democracy, Political Disengagement, and Young People’s Perceptions of Legislators in Nigeria

Mayowa Micheal Adeniji and Temitayo Isaac Odeyemi
Additional contact information
Mayowa Micheal Adeniji: Redeemer’s University
Temitayo Isaac Odeyemi: School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds

A chapter in The Legislature in Nigeria’s Presidential Democracy of the Fourth Republic, 2023, pp 93-111 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Youth political disengagement and poor perceptions of the political system continue to dominate many democracies. While the phenomenon of youth voter apathy, as a specific form of disengagement, is noticeable in Nigeria, little is known about what factors influence young people’s perceptions of representative democracy on the one hand, and how such perceptions influence their willingness to engage elected national and subnational parliamentarians, on the other hand. This study explores this phenomenon by drawing on the importance of an inclusive governance system that caters to all groups, especially in Nigeria where young people constitute an overwhelming majority of the population. A mixed method approach utilizing a survey of young people drawn from serving members of Nigeria’s National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme and focus group discussions with officials of youth-based civic groups (ages 18–30) helped in shedding light on the subject. While reinforcing the widely known poor perceptions of representative democracy among young people, the findings further demonstrate an abysmally low level of knowledge of the process that births the legislature and legislators through the mechanics of representative democracy.

Keywords: Representation; Youth political engagement; Legislature; Nigeria; Political participation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:aaechp:978-3-031-24695-1_7

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783031246951

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-24695-1_7

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Advances in African Economic, Social and Political Development from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().