IMPACT OF POVERTY ON THE VOTING BEHAVIOUR OF ELECTORATES IN RIVERS STATE, NIGERIA: 2015 – 2019 GUBERNATORIAL ELECTION

Abstract

Rivers State was created on 27th May 1967, under the administration of General Yakubu Gowon (Rtd). At fifty-four years of creation, the state is still struggling with elusive goal of socio-economic and political integration; Her people are faced with basic problems of survival that they are expected to have overcome after half a century of creation. Today, majority of the people in Rivers state go to bed with empty stomach. Casual evidence of the growing intensity of poverty in the state can be glimpsed from rising incidence of mass unemployment, homelessness, diminished access to quality food and nutrition, health care and educational facilities and the rising incidence of street begging, among others. To add salt to injury, the pervasive poverty state of the people has led to steady increase in political vices and anti-democratic behaviours; such as: thuggery, assassination, vote buying, election rigging and' destruction of properties. This study, however, examines the relationship between poverty and voting behaviour in River State during the 2015 and 2019 gubernatorial election The study adopted the primary and secondary based research method of data collection and analysis with Marxist Political Economic theory as a theoretical underpinning. The Research randomly selected a population of respondents for the purpose of the study. The Sampling population is drawn from 2006 population statistics of Rivers state. The targets of interest to the researcher are the low-income earners of voting age. The study found that the apathetic attitude towards election, rampant induced voting with meager monetary gifts, crude vote rigging, and frequent incidents of violence witnessed during successive elections in River State is majorly due to the intense poverty status of the people. It however recommended that government should take serious pragmatic steps to empower the citizens economically; and one way that could be done is by encouraging and wooing foreign Direct Investment which can generate good jobs through higher wages and enhance firm production to reduce poverty.