ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the voter education campaign undertaken by the National Orientation Agency (NOA) leading up to the 2019 general election in Nigeria. Applying the three–domain framework developed in Chapter 2, the chapter draws attention to the ‘tactics’ and ‘strategies’ that the NOA deliberates and the Nigerian community responses, how both work on themselves and the other to become willing subjects of a particular system of discursive knowledge about elections and election processes. The chapter argues that voter education is a process of knowledge dissemination and diffusion embedded within power relations between the government, stakeholders of voter education like the NOA, and the people. It is also a socialisation process that locates people’s identity within religious groups and at the same time national values. Both are necessary to cultivate citizenship and collective belonging to engender ‘critique’ as a counterpoint to election misconducts and ‘political turn’ to undertake proper voting procedures as normative valuable doing and being. While religion is often seen as the cause of conflicts in Nigeria, this chapter suggests religion is a conditioning of cultural and political life in Nigerian society, as well as possible conditions for meaningful political participation. This implies the pertinence of religion and its ethnic, regional, and political bearings in political participation. The chapter lays ground for further work on political education and its potential for political participation, even if it is a form of governmentality.
