Impact of Substance Abuse on Election Violence – The Case of 2023 General Elections in Nigeria

The vision of every nation going through a nascent democracy is to have a seamless electioneering process that would produce credible and effective leaders who reflect the will of the people. However, this may not always be so, as the exercise may be fraught with violence. This qualitative narrative research examines the impact of substance abuse on election violence with particular reference to the 2023 general elections in Nigeria. Data collection was done through Focus Group Discussion (FGD) in two homogenous groups of participants comprising ten (10) males and females in each group from Makurdi, Nigeria. Participants were briefed, and they filled out the consent form to show willingness to participate. They were aged between 26 and 63 years and had voted in the 2023 elections. A set of written question statements guided the discussions to direct the sessions by the interviewer, while two reporters recorded the responses of the participants. Responses were retrospective and experiences were based not only on what was witnessed in the participants’ polling stations but also on scenes from the electronic and social media. Discussions confirmed different forms of violence and that these were largely carried out by the young people and fuelled by the political elites. Both groups attested to the increase of substance use and abuse during elections but differentiated types along rural and urban lines, with alcoholic beverages being more in use in the rural and synthetic drugs more popular in the urban, but also opined that marijuana use cuts across the divide. They agreed that consumption of psychoactive substances could have aided in physical and verbal violent actions like kidnapping, fighting, macheting, killing, stuffing and snatching of ballot boxes, abuses, threats, and the like. They suggested that families, schools, communities, and government should work hard to educate voters on the need for a violence-free election and to contain the excessive use of psychoactive substances, especially during elections. Finally, the need to prosecute election offenders to deter others from indulging in the same was reiterated. Article visualizations: