WOMEN PARTICIPATION IN THE 2015 GENERAL ELECTIONS IN NIGERIA

Participation and apathy are the twin issues in elections and politics world over. According to feminists and political participation theorists those who do not participate as voters are apathetic, which can be measured as a percentage of the total registered voters in a country, that cast their votes in a specific election. In this paper, we have presented and analyzed the percentage of those who participated in the 2015 Nigerian general elections across the board, and specially the percentage of women who participated as against those who were registered. Specifically, the paper analyzed the percentage of women who were elected to various offices of the country at the national and state levels using a comparative method which addressed the participation patterns from the past to the present elections of 2015, in Nigeria. The methodology adopted was based on secondary data which have been analyzed using descriptive statistics expressed in term of tables and simple percentage. Results indicated interesting emerging patterns and trends in women political participation in Nigeria. The obvious implications of these findings for the future are that if Nigerian women are not encouraged politically, women apathy will nose-dive even more dangerously. However, Nigerian women given more political impetus and economic empowerment shall strive to achieve the 1995 Beiging declarations of 35% for women participation in politics. Keywords : Women, Voters, Voted and Political Participation in Election