Undergraduates’ political culture and influence in Nigerian universities: implications for sustainable democracy

Abstract

Politics on campus is an organized students’ activities through which they make, preserve and amend the rules and regulations which governed their conducts. This paper assessed undergraduates’ political culture and influence in Nigeria: implication for sustainable democracy. A descriptive survey research design was adopted. The population of the study covered all undergraduates in Kwara State. Sample for this study comprised 600 respondents from federal, state and private universities in the state were sampled through a stratified random sampling technique. The instrument was a questionnaire titled “Undergraduates’ Political Culture and Influence Questionnaire (UPCIQ)” with a reliability of 0.73 coefficient. The data collected were analysed using mean and standard deviation for all the research questions. The findings of the study showed that the prevalent undergraduates’ political culture were selfdenigrating, leadership rascality and leadership irresponsibility. The prevalent political influence were rational-legal basis of authority, political power as result of social position and Charismatic basis of authority among undergraduates on the campus. Resources of political influence were legitimate power, social media as channel of information and logical reasoning. Based on these findings, it was recommended that political culture and influence of undergraduates have to be regulated by school management through students’ affairs unit for fair political activities and sustainable democracy on our campuses.