Influence of Religious Belief on Political Participation in South West
CHAPTER ONE
Research Objectives
The main objective of the study is to examine the influence of religious belief on political participation in South West. The following are the specific objectives of this study
- To identify the main cause of religious beliefs in Nigeria.
- To examine how Ethno-religious conflict determined participating patterns in in the South West elections.
- To investigate the credibility of the in the South West elections vis-a-vis sentimental participating patterns.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
Religious belief
A belief is an attitude that something is the case, or that some proposition about the world is true. In epistemology, philosophers use the term “belief” to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false. To believe something is to take it to be true; for instance, to believe that snow is white is comparable to accepting the truth of the proposition “snow is white”. However, holding a belief does not require active introspection. For example, few carefully consider whether or not the sun will rise tomorrow, simply assuming that it will. Moreover, beliefs need not be occurrent (e.g. a person actively thinking “snow is white”), but can instead be dispositional (e.g. a person who if asked about the color of snow would assert “snow is white”).
There are various different ways that contemporary philosophers have tried to describe beliefs, including as representations of ways that the world could be (Jerry Fodor), as dispositions to act as if certain things are true (Roderick Chisholm), as interpretive schemes for making sense of someone’s actions (Daniel Dennett and Donald Davidson), or as mental states that fill a particular function (Hilary Putnam). Some have also attempted to offer significant revisions to our notion of belief, including eliminativists about belief who argue that there is no phenomenon in the natural world which corresponds to our folk psychological concept of belief (Paul Churchland) and formal epistemologists who aim to replace our bivalent notion of belief (“either we have a belief or we don’t have a belief”) with the more permissive, probabilistic notion of credence (“there is an entire spectrum of degrees of belief, not a simple dichotomy between belief and non-belief”).
Religious belief refers to attitudes towards mythological, supernatural, or spiritual aspects of a religion. Religious belief is distinct from religious practice and from religious behaviours – with some believers not practicing religion and some practitioners not believing religion. Religious beliefs, deriving from ideas that are exclusive to religion, often relate to the existence, characteristics and worship of a deity or deities, to the idea of divine intervention in the universe and in human life, or to the deontological explanations for the values and practices centered on the teachings of a spiritual leader or community. In contrast to other belief systems, religious beliefs are usually codified.
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research Design
The methodology adopted for this research is quantitative which emphasizes on the use of numeric data and statistics to draw out its findings. The quantitative methodology is also used in situation where a general knowledge is needed about a certain problem, the quantitative methodology tries to discover the magnitude, frequency and extent of the independent variable on the dependent variable.
Method of Sampling
The simple random sampling will be used for sampling this is because it gives everyone the opportunity to be selected by eliminating bias.
CHAPTER FOUR
DATA PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS
Result
The questionnaire was designed to address the objectives of this study with eighteen questions which were divided into two (2) sections, namely the section A and section B. The section A comprises of the socio demographical characteristics of the respondents while section B contains questions on issues in religious belief and participating pattern. It presents the major findings of the study relating to the research questions and depicting their relationships. One hundred and fifty copies of questionnaires were distributed to one hundred and fifty (150) respondents selected purposively, but 100 (66.7%) were returned to the researcher. Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) was employed in analyzing the data collected.
CHAPTER FIVE
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
This study was carried out on religious belief and participating behavior in Nigeria. It is limited in term of the size of the sample which should have included samples from other geopolitical zones of the country. Also, the adoption of content analysis of two dailies in addition to the questionnaire administration technique would have revealed the political participation of Nigerians during the election. It is expected that further research will be conducted to identify other variables that are predictors of participating pattern in Nigeria.
The study reveals that some significant relationships existed between religious belief and political participation of the electorates. The results show that some variables such as common ancestry and language of the voters, ethnic and religious affiliation and other primordial bonds did significantly influence political participation of the electorates during the 2015 presidential election. This was evident among the Igbo and the Hausa ethnic identities because the major contestants emerged from the two ethnic identities. Most Igbo voted for the incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan because he is from south-south region. Most Northern settlements in Ibadan voted massively for Muhammadu Buhari because they shared a common ancestry irrespective of the location they cast their votes.
The election witnessed an intense politicization of the Muslim-Christian divide and the north-south dichotomy in the country.The name‘political south’and‘political north’ was induced by voters particularly in the south-east, south south and north-east, north-west regions. The result released by INEC in the south-south and south-east saw PDP securing 87.55% and 89.66% respectively of the entire votes for
Jonathan while north-west and north-east saw APC securing 81.34% and 75.28% respectively of the votes for Muhammadu Buhari.
Primordial ties with the presidential candidates during the 2015 presidential election played a vital role in the emergence of such candidates emerging winners in such places of the ties.
References
- Akpakipan, F.J.C (2009) Basic Issues in Partisan Politics, retrieved from
- http://www.akpakipan.basicissuesinpartisanpolitics/html2004
- Archer, S. (2009) Why Do Kenyans Vote Along Ethnic Lines: A Study of Underlying
- Rationales for Kenyan Electoral Behaviour. University of Oslo
- Ayantayo, J. K. (2009). Religious Factors in the Nigerian Public Sphere: Burdens and
- Prospects. In Africa Development, Vol. XXXIV, Nos 3 & 4, pp. 93–109
- Baiyewu, L. (2015), 2015 elections: An X-ray of INEC, The Punch, May 3.
- http://www.punchng.com/politics/2015-elections-an-x-ray-of-inec/
- Birnir, J. K. (2007) Religious belief and Electoral Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.
- Bratton, M., R. Bhavnani & T. Chen (2011) ‘‘Participating Intentions in Africa: Ethnic, Economic
- or Partisan’’ Afrobarometer Working Paper No. 127
- Bryman, A (1993), ‘Charismatic Leadership in Organizations: Some Neglected Issues’,
- Leadership Quarterly, Vol. 4, pp. 289-304
- Chan, Z. C. Y., Fung, Y., & Chien, W. (2013). Bracketing in phenomenology: Only
- undertaken in the data collection and analysis process? The Qualitative Report, 18 (59), 1-9. Retrieved from http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR
- Chressanthis, G, Gilbert, K. & Grima, P (1991), ‘Ideology, Constituent Interests and
- Senatorial Participating’, Social Science Quarterly, Vol. 72, no. 3, pp. 588-600
- Cohen Abner (1976) Custom and Politics in Urban Africa‖ in Sanda A.O (Ed) Ethnic
- Relations in Nigeria, Department of Sociology, University Of Ibadan, Nigeria 1976.
- Davies, AE (2006), Money and Politics in the Nigeria Electoral Process, Department of
- Political Science Memo, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria.
