The curious case of Nigeria’s lowest voter turnout since 1999

The voter turnout at Nigeria’s last presidential election (2019) slumped to a record-low of 34.75 percent, according to INEC data.
That’s the lowest since the country returned to democratic rule in 1999. As a percentage of eligible voters, the number is far worse at an abysmal 26.87 percent.

The trend of declining voter turnout began in 2007 before bottoming at the last election.
In the 1999 election, the voter turnout was 52.3 percent, which meant 1 in every 2 Nigerians who registered to vote eventually voted.
In 2003, the voter turnout jumped to 69.1 percent before slowing every year since then to 57.49 percent in 2007, 53.68 percent in 2011 and 43.65 percent in 2015.

The voter turnout in 2019 mysteriously declined despite a 22 percent increase in registered voters to 82 million from 67 mil- lion in 2015.
Of the three voting blocs, the Bible Belt states, the PDP strong- hold, suffered the biggest drop of all the blocs.

Voter turnout in the Bible Belt states fell 15.7 percent between 2015 and 2019, nearly three times faster than anywhere else.

Read also: Low voter turnout blunts Nigeria’s largest voting bloc

Bible belt states like Rivers (-47.9 percent), Akwa-Ibom (-34.9 percent), Delta (-33.4 percent), Bayelsa (-26.3 percent) and Enugu (-20.4 percent) suffered the worst contractions in voter turnout in the country.
The decline in voter turnout was much milder for the Northern Alliance which saw a decline of 5.2 percent, the lowest of the three voting blocs despite widespread insecurity.
Only one of the Northern Alliance states, Zamfara, saw a double-digit decline (18.4 percent) in voter turnout.

Ironically, the only state where voter turnout increased in the country was in the Boko Haram-ravaged Borno which saw an 11 percent growth compared to 2015.
The Rockies also suffered a decline in voter turnout with a drop of 6.8 percent. Only Ogun and Oyo had a double-digit decline in voter turnout among the Rockies states with -11.1 percent and -12.6 percent respectively.