Opportunities or risks for civic education in electoral democracies? Evidence from Nigeria

Abstract

Drawing on theory and evidence from Western societies, many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa implement civic education at school to foster political knowledge, engagement, as well as pro-democratic attitudes and behaviour. Yet instead of increasing participation as in established Western democracies, research focusing on adults in African electoral democracies suggests that citizens with higher socio-economic status, more knowledge, and adherence to democratic norms, are more likely to retreat from institutionalized politics given their increased awareness of the flawed nature of the political regimes they live in, where corruption, clientelism, electoral violence, and human rights abuses are still prevalent. In this paper, we use an original large-scale survey of secondary school students in Lagos state, Nigeria, and demonstrate by means of multilevel regression and Latent Class Analysis (LCA) how some, but not all of these tendencies are also present among adolescents, with optimistic implications for civic education on the continent.