The dilemma of youth’s political participation

Is political crowdfunding panacea to youth’s political participation in Nigeria

Bibliographic Data

ID19224757
AuthorsAlex Cyril Ekeke (0000-0002-8622-6726, Abia State University, corresponding author)
Year2026
Pages1-16
Publication date2026-04-25
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAfrican Identities (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1472-5843 • E-ISSN: 1472-5851
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14725843.2026.2661766
OpenAlexW7155649936
LanguageEN
References cited21

In a democratic system such as Nigeria where political representation and participation are mostly self-funded, a major dilemma with youths’ representation and participation in Nigerian politics can be traced to the high costs of nomination forms for various offices and poor campaign funding. In the run up to the 2023 general election, the cost of nomination forms was as high as 100 million ($217,391 at 460 Naira to 1 dollar official rate as at 2022) for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) nomination forms for president, 50 million ($108,695) for governorship nomination forms, 20 million ($43,478) for senate nomination forms, 10 million ($21,739) for house of representatives nomination forms and 2 million ($4,347) for state assembly nomination forms. Most Nigerian youths are financially incapable of providing this huge amount of money to self-fund their election campaign. This paper examines the prospect of crowdfunding as one of the ways that can help improve youth’s representation and participation in Nigerian politics. This paper engages descriptive, analytical and prescriptive methods and argues that Crowd funding can provide the initial fundraising process that can assist the youths who are unable to self-fund their election campaign

American political science · Democracy · Dilemma · Panacea (medicine) · Politics · Economic Growth and Development · FinTech, Crowdfunding, Digital Finance · Social Media and Politics

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