Negative Political Characters in Nigeria: Effects on Political Behaviours

Abstract

Character is key to the success or otherwise of individual, community and the society in general. Character becomes more significance for us as a social being. Social being needs to relate and interact with other people of diverse culture and tradition, religions, historical background, languages and so on. Hence, the character that is display or exhibited as social being in different circles goes a long way to determine the kind of responses and reactions such a person would receive in such circles. For a pluralistic and diverse society such as Nigeria, with over 250 ethnic groups and over 300 languages, there is dire need for proper, adequate and acceptable political character in the country. The failure of any of the ethnic groups to exhibit acceptable character in the country may serve as a threat to the political stability and social cohesion of the country. This becomes germane, as the negative characters may lead to negative voters’ behavior which may subsequently threaten the corporate existence of the country as more and more voter shows apathy towards voting in particular and political participation in general. The aim of this paper is to examine the negative political characters in Nigeria vis-à-vis its effects on voter’s behavior in Nigeria. Purely a qualitative paper, hence secondary data will be put to use. Some major negative political behavior identified by this paper are corruption, political violence and lack of accountability. The paper therefore suggested good governance and social inclusiveness as some of the solutions to these problems. Keywords: Negative characters, political behavior, Nigeria, corruption, apolitical