Youth Political Participation in Sokoto – Breaking the Stronghold and Creating Pathways

Youth political participation is critical to stable democratic process and governance and understanding its dynamics could help in scientific characterisation and classification of different polities in being responsive and responsible administratively. In other words, democratisation in New Democracies is often strengthened and/or punctuated by the measures of its all-inclusiveness of youth. Specifically, today there is in broader, albeit, ambiguous ways, a general resurgence in youth political activism in political parties, voting, social media political engagement, etc. The focus of this study is predicated on examining the role of political parties, (social) media, trust and domineering influence of godfathers in explaining the general resurgence in youth political activism, especially within the context of increasing voter turnout and voter registration in Sokoto state. The study specifically examines the role of political parties and (social) media in strengthening youth political participation in Sokoto; explores the extent to which trust in political parties and electoral institutions influence youth political participation in Sokoto State; and analyses the factor of godfathers as dominant political actors in youth political participation. Methodologically, the study employs mixed methods research design, in which qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection, sampling and data analysis were simultaneously employed. In the use of qualitative methods, KII and FGD were employed as instruments of data collection, while in quantitative methods; survey questionnaires were used to collect data. Simple descriptive statistics was used in the presentation and analysis of quantitative data. For qualitative data, four stages of analysis recommended by Connolly (2003) were employed. Six LGAs were sampled, two each from the three Senatorial Districts