Politics, Religion and Electoral Outcomes in Nigeria: The 2023 Presidential Election in Perspective

Abstract

Religion has always been a major determinant of electoral behaviors in most democracies despite attempts and claims by most states at running secular regimes. This paper examines the extent to which religion has influenced politics in Nigeria. It equally examines the roles played by the two dominant religions in Nigeria, Islam and Christianity, in shaping the outcome of the 2023 Presidential election. Although, this study made do with secondary data as sourced from the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, it however adopts a combination of both the quantitative and qualitative techniques in analyzing the outcomes of the election. Running a critical analysis of the Presidential election results, with respect to the strongholds of the candidates of the three leading political parties, the Peoples Democratic Party, All Progressive Congress and the Labour Party vis-à-vis the strongholds of the two major religions in the country, a strong nexus was drawn between religion, politics and electoral outcome in Nigeria. Findings revealed that the two major religions played major roles in the determination of electoral outcomes in the 2023 Presidential election. This paper therefore posits that religion plays a critical role in determining electoral outcomes in Nigeria, and suggests that for the nation to develop, we need to grow our democracy far above religion among other diversities plaguing the state. This could be done through mass re-orientation of the citizens by socialization agencies such as the National Orientation Agency, Religious and Political Institutions.