Mobilised, Not Marginalised: Ethnicity, Gender, and Political Participation among Older Nigerians

<title>Abstract</title> <p>Patronage-centred accounts of Nigerian politics assume that members of ethnic minority groups are excluded from political life, yet this assumption has never been tested among older adults. Using the Afrobarometer Round 10 survey in Nigeria (N = 1,600; adults aged 50 and above, n = 184), analysed with survey weights and cluster-robust standard errors, this article asks whether ethnic minority status predicts political exclusion in later life, whether trust in traditional leaders mediates any disparity, and whether gender and ethnicity intersect. Contrary to the deficit hypothesis, minority elders reported substantially higher non-electoral participation than majority-group elders (57.9% versus 29.0%; adjusted OR = 3.50, 95% CI [1.39, 8.82]), a difference carried by collective petitioning of government rather than by low-cost online activity, with no detectable difference in self-reported turnout. The association is nonetheless fragile. Ethnicity and region are nearly collinear among older respondents: comparing respondents within the same state reduces the estimate to OR = 1.52 (95% CI [0.85, 2.71]), and measuring ethnicity with the survey's direct identity item rather than home language reduces it to OR = 1.62 (95% CI [0.35, 7.57]). Across twenty-four specifications the estimate ranges from 1.16 to 7.17. Trust in traditional leaders neither varies by ethnicity nor predicts participation, so patronage-based trust cannot mediate the relationship, although contact with traditional leaders predicts participation strongly (OR = 6.55) and equally across groups. The most robust finding is gendered: older women's adjusted odds of participation are a fraction of older men's (OR = 0.06, 95% CI [0.01, 0.34]); 4.8% of majority-group women participated, against 43.1% of majority-group men, with no reliable gender-by-ethnicity interaction. Deficit accounts find no support, but it is gender, not ethnicity, that constitutes the consistent axis of exclusion from political voice among older Nigerians.</p>