Implications of social media and money-induced voting behavior on governance crises in Nigeria

Abstract

This paper investigates the influence of social media and money on voting behavior and its impact ongovernance crises. It argues that the effect of tampered voting behavior due to intra-party money-inducement during election on governance crises in Nigeria has received very little attention. Indeed,general elections in Nigeria, have heavily been money-ladened, and money has effectively been usedto tamper voters' behavior. Voters' have changed their minds on who to vote for, just because moneywas given to them. Thus, how heavily monetized voting behavior stimulate governance crises remainlargely underrepresented in the literature. Drawing on qualitative method, this article measuredincessant governance crises in Nigeria from the prism of monetized voting behavior. The findingsprovide adequate information on the dimension of money and social media politics in Nigeria's primaryelections. It also advances knowledge on the link between governance crises and monetization ofvoters' behavior. It concludes that the emergence of the current Nigerian president, which is largelybased on monetization of voters and abusive use of social media tools, is the leading cause of currentcrises in governance in Nigeria