CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1    Background of the Study
Since the return to civil rule on 29 May 1999, Nigeria has held five general elections, apart from sundry re-run elections and local government polls conducted by the electoral body. Out of the five general elections conducted, only the 2015 general election met both the local and international standard. The disturbing trend is that each general election was worse than the preceding one (2003 was worse than 1999; and 2007 was worse than 2003). This trend shows that Nigeria is faring very badly at each passing election as nobody can talk of consolidating democracy in an environment characterized by electoral violence, electoral fraud, ethnic loyalty, party affiliation and religious sentiments.
Conducting a free and fair election is vital to the growth and development of any democratic process.  Also, an average Nigerian voter is interested in immediate pecuniary or material rewards, and will easily trade off his votes when appropriately induced. This  can  be explained  by  the  crippling  poverty  facing  the  people  in  the  absence  of government’s  provision  of  the basic amenities required for decent living, as well as their justified distrust of the political leaders (Ebegbulem, 2011).
Indeed, one major element of electoral process is that election must be conducted in a free and fair atmosphere,  while  electoral  results  must  reflect  the  wishes  of  the people.   Nigeria’s  experience  in  this  regard  had  since  independence  been contrary  to  this  expectation.  This  is  because  previous  and  present electoral  bodies  had  conducted  elections  in  a  way  that  favoured  the ruling  political  parties  through  poor  planning,  the  device  of  excluding electorates from voting in places considered to be the strongholds of opposition, inadequate supply of voting materials, and late arrival of electoral officers to polling stations.
Conventionally, voting is the fulcrum of political participation in liberal democracies.  Voters’ behaviour can explain the raison de’tre for decision making by the electorate. Goldman (1966) submits that inferences and predictions about behaviour concerning a voting decision involves certain factors that are not limited to gender, race, culture, or religion. For him also key public influences include the role of emotions, political socialization, tolerance of diversity of political views and the media. Essentially, the effect of these influences on voting behaviour can best be understood through proper scrutiny on the formation of attitude, beliefs, schema, knowledge structures and the practice of information processing. Survey from different countries indicate that people are generally happier in individualistic cultures where they have rights such as the right to vote (Diener, 2000).
In a multilingual, multi-cultural democratic setting like Nigeria, voting behaviour is dictated by a plethora of complex issues. This stems from the fact that it involves an analysis of individual psychological processes vis-à-vis perception, emotion, and motivation and to a large extent, their relation to political action as well as of institutional patterns, such as the communication process and their impacts on elections. In national elections, it is usually the norm that people vote based on their political beliefs. However, considering the fact that a voter is a rational creature in the philosophical sense of the term, he is not so rational; in the realms of his economic or political behavior (Joseph, 2015).
Voter behaviour to this extent displays the astounding factor that the behaviour of man is influenced by several irrational factors and pressure group in invoking religious and communal sentiments, influence of money or charismatic personality of a leader and a host of other irrational forces on the minds of the voter.