YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT AND ELECTORAL VIOLENCE IN NIGERIA: A TUMOUR IN THE NECK OF NIGERIA’S NASCENT DEMOCRACY

Abstract

Democracy is regarded all over the world as one of the best forms of government. This assertion is not unconnected with the fact that the citizens are given the opportunity to elect leaders of their choice through elections. The chosen leaders in turn are expected to protect and provide for the welfare of the citizens who elected them to political positions in the areas of security to lives and property, employment, socio-economic and infrastructural facilities among others. However, with the rate of unemployment among the youth in Nigeria and the incessant electoral violence orchestrated by unemployed youth, it becomes imperative that the problem of youth unemployment must be solved to protect Nigeria’s nascent democracy. All efforts of various governments to address youth unemployment and curb electoral violence have continued to yield no desired results. It is based on this that this study interrogates youth unemployment and electoral violence in Nigeria with the intention of finding possible solutions. The paper highlights the relevant issues relating to youth unemployment and electoral violence in Nigeria. The research methodology adopted is the contents analysis of existing literature on the related subject, while secondary sources of data were used. The paper was predicated on deprivation and aggression theory as its framework of analysis. The findings reveal that the youth who are deprived from access to job opportunities are aggrieved and as such become tools for electoral violence in Nigeria. The paper recommends among other things; job creation, skills acquisition, agricultural programs, soft loans, and monthly stipends for unemployed youth.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1      BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Electoral violence in Nigeria like many other African states has been an age long issue that dates back to 1922 with the introduction of Clifford’s constitution. The attainment of independence in 1960 recorded the first electoral violence in post-colonial Nigeria in 1964 and 1965 following both federal and regional elections as well as rift between Awolowo and Akintola (Abah  & Nwokwu 2015). The situation of electoral violence since this period remained unabated despite various electoral laws and policies rolled out by various governments to cur the situation. Since the return of democracy in 1999, the spat of electoral violence in the country has taken a new and dangerous dimensions as it has moved from rigging to political killing, bombings, armed clashes between supporters of rival political parties, kidnapping of political rivalries, burning of houses, vehicles and properties ( Akiyemi, 2011). The violence takes place in three major dimension, namely; pre, during and post-election as noted by Adeja (2006), thereby questioning the real motives behind the present dimension of political violence. Though the candidates of various political parties deploy various strategies to out twists their political rivalry in term of intimidation, the real violent attacks are carried out by the supporters who are mainly the youth who have tied their success in life to the success of their candidates in such elections, and for such group, election is a do or die affair. Although several factors could have contributed to this situation, there is no doubt that youth unemployment have contributed immensely to the level of the present electoral violence in Nigeria. This group is made up of mostly the unemployed youth and the underemployed ones, prompting Iyoko (2012) to argue that unemployment has become chronic and intractable and has become the brain behind youth restiveness in the country which electioneering normally creates opportunities for them. Berkowitz (2009) notes that youth all over the world are vital and important segment of the society in which they live, as disciplined, focused and law abiding youth can create a bright future for any nation, however, where the future of the youth becomes bleak, they are engulfed by frustration.

The present rate of unemployment as published by Nigeria’s National Bureau of statistics (2019) put it at 14.2% in the last quarter of 2016, up from 13.9 in the preceding quarter, indicating that unemployment rate in Nigeria is on the rise. The youth at this stage, are the most affected groups and since they do not have any other option, they become tools in the hands of the politicians for electoral violence, since these are youth that most of them have graduated from tertiary institutions and other levels of education, with some others that have graduated from vocational training and skills acquisition, but have no job opportunities. In Nigeria, employment into the ministries has been on hold for the last decade now, while the few agencies that recruit, normally raise the requirements to first class or second class upper division which are only shared to political office holders and those in government who in turn sale such chances to the highest bidders, a situation that make the youth feel that they have been forgotten by the government, a situation that was corroborated by Inyang (2009) when he notes that the problem of violence in Nigeria lies with the neglect of the youth by the government.

However, the level at which the issue of unemployment of the youth are tackled in Nigeria will go a long way in curbing electoral violence and save the Nigerian nascent democracy from collapse.

1.2      Statement of the Problem

Democracy is seen as one of the best forms of government all over the world since the citizens are given the opportunity to decide their leaders. This prompted Nigeria to go extra length in bringing back democratic governance in 1999. However, since the return of democracy in 1999, the spite of electoral violence that follows every election in the country has been a source of serious concern to the people. This violence negates peaceful co-existence, law and order, security and as well endangers the consolidation of democracy. While many reasons have been adduced to be responsible for electoral violence, which includes; perceived unfair electoral processes, corruption and multi ethnic nature of the country, others are of the opinion that the issue of youth unemployment is a critical issues that cannot be easily waved away, since the youths are the instruments used by the perpetrators of electoral violence to achieve their objectives. In Nigeria, the issue of unemployment has reached an alarming proportion that if not tackled could turn to a tumor in the neck of Nigeria’s nascent democracy.  To tackle this problem, this study has come up with the following research questions to guide the study:

1. Has youth unemployment contributed to electoral violence in Nigeria?
2. What are the impact of electoral violence to sustainable democracy in Nigeria?
3. What are the strategies of curtailing electoral violence in Nigeria?

1.3      Objective of the study

1. The broad objective of this study is to investigate youth unemployment, electoral violence and sustenance of democracy in Nigeria.
2. The specific objectives includes;
3. To determine the role of youth unemployment on electoral violence in Nigeria.
4. To examine the impact of electoral violence on sustainable democracy in Nigeria.
5. To proffer strategies for curbing youth unemployment and electoral violence in Nigeria.

1.4      Significance of the study

The study adopts a historical method, therefore, it will help showing the trend of unemployment and violence in the Nigeria electoral system, its causes and the way forward.

1.5      Literature review

“Violence,” within which is found the phenomena of political violence is defined by Bienen, (1968) as the use of illegitimate force. Anifowose, (1982) argues that most violent acts are political in nature and for the definition to subsist; there must be the intent of affecting the political -process. To elucidate, he suggests that the political native may not be immediately apparent. However, the definition seeks to exclude accidents and criminal actions for personal gains but includes acts of both representatives of government or dissidents.

For him, Electoral violence therefore means” “the use or threat of physical act carried out by an individual or individuals within a political system against another individual or individuals, and /or property, with the intent to cause injury or death to persons and/ or damage or destruction to property; and whose objective, choice of targets or victims, surrounding circumstances …tend to modify the behaviour of others in the existing arrangement of power structures.” Tilly (1978) Understands violence as “a variety of protest, militancy, coercion, destruction, or muscle flexing which the observer or object happens to fear or condemn. In the contemporary Nigerian example, shooting into the air at a polling station or threatening political rivals with death are instance of electoral violence. It is important however, to identify the phenomenon of political struggle to explain how electoral violence develops and matures. In the Nigerian example, according to Dudley (1955) the possession of political power leads directly to economic power. Those who hold positions in the power structure determine the location and distribution of scarce resources Dudley (1955) puts it very clearly: “Politics means money and money means politics, to get politics there is always a price.

To be a member of the government party means „Open Avenue‟ to government patronage, Contract deals and the likes”. Dudley (1955) explains it further by stating that once actors have known the profitability of having power they naturally use the same governmental machinery (Such as electoral commission and the law, enforcement agencies) to stay in power even perpetually. The leadership becomes a self-recruiting, Oligarchy that has been known not to tolerate opposition to itself. When the elites have used the machinery of the state to gain power, they spend public resources in achieving the goal of controlling the government, thereby, disregarding the established channels of political actions. The result becomes the breakdown of justice, ordered relationships between individuals and groups and between the government and the opposition. Violence immediately develops as a feature of the struggle for power, thus, establishing itself as an emerging culture.

1.6      Research hypothesis

The Hypotheses formulated for this study is thus:

H0: Electoral violence does not destabilize the growth and progress of the country.

H1: Electoral violence destabilize the growth and progress of the country.

1.7      Scope and limitation of the study

This study is focused on the youth unemployment and electoral violence in Nigeria. It accommodates reviews and studies relating to the research problem. However, it is limited to the post-colonial era and majorly the second republic period in Nigeria.

1.8      The definition of the key concept

Youth Unemployment in Nigeria:

Generally, youth is regarded as young boys and girls who are still at their prime age beyond being recognized as children but not up to be seen as adults. As a result of the problems of coming into consensus by scholars on the precise definition of the word as a result of its varying definitions by countries, organizations and cultural groups, the term youth has not been captured by one definition. However, in Nigeria, the Nigerian Population Commission sees youth as persons between the ages of 18 and 24. Osakwe (2013), describes youth as persons who normally would have completed secondary education and would either be in tertiary institution or striving to secure employment, or be already employed. He states further that in some other places, that youth has been described as a phase, a transition from dependence to independence and possessing certain distinct features such as; leaving the parental home and establishing a new living arrangement, completing full time education, forming close and stable personal relationships outside of the family which often results in marriage and children bearing, testing the labor market by finding work and possible settling into career  and achieving a sustainable livelihood.

Following from the above description of the youth, it entails that youth means the stage in life where an individual is at his or her prime as a matured individual who is moving away from being dependent on the parents or relatives, to become independent in the areas of taking care of his immediate needs such as food, healthcare, accommodation, transportation, clothing, marriage and host of others. In Nigeria, this is a critical stage of human life as one has to be engaged in some gainful activities to enable him be able to take care of some of these mentioned needs and the only source of the youth to do this is through employment. Universally in most national discourse as well as in development studies and governance as observed by Osakwe (2013), the employment rate is seen as the litmus test for the effectiveness and efficiency of any administration. Though the definition of unemployment seems to be difficult especially when it is placed against its many variables such as under employment, low wage employment, informal employment among others, the fact that one is able and willing to work but is not able to find what to do to enable him or her take care of his immediate needs still shows that one is unemployed.

Although the youth are not the only employable group in the demographic structure, the importance of youth employment cannot be overemphasized in Nigeria, as the issue of unemployment with regards to the youths is responsible for all sorts of social vices which includes, violence, crime and criminality of varying degrees (Erunke, 2008). Unemployment exist when a fit and eligible individuals does not have a job or work to do for some compensation. Angela and Ugwoke (2014), describe unemployment as;

1. State of an individual looking for a paying job but not having one
2. When a people are without work and actively seeking work
3. An economic condition marked by the fact that individuals actively seeking jobs remain unemployed
4. People who do not have job, actively looking for work in the past four weeks, and are currently available for work. Also, people who were temporarily laid-off and are waiting to be called back to that job.

They equally enumerated the following as the causes of unemployment; An upsurge in the output from tertiary educational institutions and the inelastic absorptive capacity of the labour market for the services of these graduates, the imbalance between the kinds of workers wanted by employers and those looking for jobs, workers with inadequate education or training and young workers with little or no experience, corruption in high places, competition in specific industries or organizations and advanced technology such as computers or robots.

It becomes more worrisome when the youths are affected judging their position and number in any country especially in Nigeria.  Though the controversy prone statistical data in Nigeria has made it difficult to ascertain the real number of unemployed youth in the country, the problem is made more complex by the problem associated with the many age definition of a youth. That notwithstanding, seeing the number of Nigerians that graduate annually from the educational system, one would be convinced that this number fall with the age bracket of the youth. National Bureau of Statistics (2016) shows that of over 6 million Nigerians that graduate from the educational system annually, only about 10% of such number are often employed, thereby leaving about 4.5 million to go into the labor market annually.

Violence:

The word violence has no precise or commonly accepted definition. The concept often serves as a catch for every variety of protest, military intervention, coercion, destruction or condemnation of people and property. Wolf (2009) explains violence as the capacity to impose or act of imposing one’s will upon another, an imposition held to be illegitimate. Collaborating this position, Akiyemi (2011) states that violence can be unambiguously defined as the most direct and severe form of physical power, which could be described as force in action. Its use is a continuation of bargaining begun by other means, whether it is used by the State, by private groups, or by a person.

Onimisi & Omelegbe (2019) in his view, understands violence as any uninvited but intentional or half intentional act of physical act of physically violating the body of a person who previously had lived in peace, prompting  Akpan (2010) to  argue that the term violence can be used to refer to a number or different types of actions which could be purely physical, an overt individual act such as the striking of a blow or aiming of a gun, or the activity of a crowd as in the case of a mob lynching. Where ever it entails the use of material or measurable force, we may refer to it as violence. This position shows that psychological denials of autonomy and social denials of access to opportunities such as economic and political does not represent violence or inherited constraints. Akpan (2010) also emphasizes that all acts of personal overt force and overt institutional force are acts of violence. Contributing to this, Oyelude (2019) states that violence is often connected with the use of physical force and the association of force. Violence can occur among identifiable group of people whether tribal, ethnic, cultural, political and the like. Violence is generally seen as an intricate and inevitable aspect of social change in a society which is an expression of the heterogeneity of interests, values and beliefs that arise as new formations generated by social change come up against each other.

In their opinion, Akwara, Akwara, Enwuchoia, Adekunle & Udaw (2013) listed riots, coups, massacre, wars, pogrom, genocide, revolutions, clashes, conflicts, jihad and crusades, as within the ambit of violence. According to him, the etymological survey of the concept of violence may give a clearer understanding of the word which he states, comes from the combination of two Latin words: Vis (force) and fero (to carry), stating further that the Latin word, “violare” is itself a combination of these two words and its present participle “violans” is a plausible source for the word violence. Thus, the etymological origin of the word “violence” has the meaning to carry force at or toward something, prompting Earl (2014) to see violence as the use of physical force by an individual, group or organization resulting in injury or abuse to others. In line with the above argument, Apan (2010) opines that violent generally, arise from the pursuit of divergent goals and aspiration by individuals and or groups in defined social and physical environments. They are regarded as struggles over values and claims to scarce status, power and resources in which the aim of the opponents are to neutralize, injure or eliminate their rivals, or to show grievances for a perceived injustice.

United Nations Organization (UN, 2009) view violence as the intentional use of physical force or power threatened or actually against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting to injury, death, psychological harm or deprivation. The body went further to reveal that globally, violence takes the lives of more than 1.5 million people annually: just over 50% due to suicide, some 35% due to homicide, and just over 12% as a direct result of war and some other forms of conflict.

Violence ranges from demonstration to rebellion against a political system or its leaders, in certain circumstances; it is directed especially against some aspects or symbols of the political system. For instance some sort of violence may involve the loss of many lives or damage to property. Apan (2010) opines that in extreme cases, it is aimed to over throw the political authorities and destroying the established political order rather than wining of concession from people in authority.

Sawole (2019) identified and examined some forms of violence in societies which includes; domestic violence, religious violence and political or electoral violence.

Electoral Violence:

Democracy has been generally accepted as one of the best forms of government, due to the opportunity it gives to electorates to choose their leaders who would in turn provide for their welfare and socio-economic infrastructure in the society as noted by Elem (2018).The fundamental bed rock of democracy is therefore the election of political leaders through the electoral box. The electoral process process gives the citizenry the sole right to elect their preferred political leaders and at the same time, gives the opportunity to change any leader though the electioneering process with the power of their votes. This process ought to be a smooth process that does not require violence since the electorates only use their votes to determine their choice of leaders. However, in Nigeria as well as some other developing countries, the situation is different as the process is most often characterized by violence at various stages, from pre-election, during elections and post elections. This electoral process which give rights to the people to govern themselves is been challenged by the threats to security, peace and development.

Electoral violence in Nigeria’s elections can be seen to manifest in various forms as physical assaults, arson (the illegal use of fire to destroy a house, building or property), snatching of ballot boxes and murder, which is a serious threat to stable democracy. At this point, one might be curious to find out the factors responsible for all these electoral violence.

Finding the causes of electoral violence in developing countries, especially Nigeria, Elem (2018) enumerated the factors responsible for electoral violence to include; unemployment, poverty, bad governance, institutional weakness, security lapses, corruption among others. Stressing on unemployment as one of the major factors responsible for electoral violence in Nigeria, Nkwede (2019) opines that unemployment in Nigeria is alarming, and that the situation gives room for the unemployed majority to be manipulated to perpetuate all forms of electoral violence. Since the unemployed especially the youth are not able to meet up with the basic necessities of life they resort to tools in the hands of the politicians who easily recruit them to perpetuate the act of electoral violence.

Politics:

the activities associated with the governance of a country or area, especially the debate between parties having power.

1.9      Research methodology

This paper adopted the qualitative method to address youth unemployment, electoral violence and implication for sustainable democracy in Nigeria, taking into cognizance the wave of electoral violence since the return of democracy in Nigeria and the rising level of unemployment especially among the youth. Secondary sources of data were employed to obtain data from relevant books, journals, publications, conference papers among others, which were analyzed to achieve the objectives of the study.

₦4,500.00 – DOWNLOAD FULL PROJECT DOWNLOAD FULL PROJECT Added to cart

---

---

---

---

Related Project Topics :