Ethnicity, Religion and Voters Behaviour: The Experience of the 2015 Presidential Election in Nigeria

Abstract

The need for political stability and virile democratic culture in Nigeria is a great concern to all Nigerians and the international community Since the advent of the Fourth Republic in 1999 several elections have been conducted but the 2015 election is very significant to us because it exposed the unflinching role of ethnicity and religion in the voting behaviour of different segments of our society We adopted Rational Choice Theory as our conceptual framework This paper interrogates the influence of ethnicity and religion in the voting behaviour of the Nigerian electorates and recommends that voting behaviour should be based on party ideology and competence and reputation of the candidates and not ethnicity and religion