Election Participation among Ikwerre Ethnic Group in Nigeria: Do Social Media and Personal Belief Counts?

Abstract

Citizens’ participation in the election of public figures into the executive arms of the government has been widely accepted as one of the fundamental rights of every citizen. Studies have investigated several predictors of election participation with varied results. Therefore, this study was aimed to decode social media and personal belief as predictors of election participation among Ikwerre ethnic groups in Nigeria. Social descriptive survey was adopted while purposive sampling technique was used to select the study population. Data were collected from 260 participants using validated scaled and analyzed using multiple regression analysis and independent samples t-test. Two hypotheses were tested and accepted at p=.001 level of significance. The result showed that social media and personal belief jointly predicted election participation among Ikwerre ethnic groups in Nigeria [R2 = .623, F(2, 257) = 130.006, p =.001]. Furthermore, social media (β = .306, t = 6.743, p =.001) and personal belief (β =.642, t = 14.127, p = 001) independently predicted election participation among study participants. Finally, the result indicated significant gender difference among study participants [t(258) = [17.308], p =.001) such that male participants scored higher in election participation (M= 43.510, SD = 6.841) compared to female counterparts (M=30.420, SD = 2.749). The novelty of these findings comes as the first time social media and personal belief on election participation among ethnic groups is investigated in Nigeria. It is recommended that social media platform should be used to educate the general public on what are expected of them in order to improve their attitude towards election participation. Also, the electoral body should carry out timely campaign and sensitization programmes on the need for eligible candidates to come forth and participate in election processes.