Candidate Selection at the State Level: An Empirical Study of Peoples’ Democratic Party Gubernatorial Primaries in North West Nigeria

Abstract

Political parties are central to modern democracy. Researchers have, for a long time contended that meaningful political parties are necessary for a thriving democratic system. Candidates’ selection is among the foremost programmes every political party carry out before participating in a general election. It is believed that candidates’ selection has a consequence to a political party in the end. This paper attempts to empirically examine factors that determine gubernatorial candidate selection in North West Nigeria. Three states were selected and questionnaires distributed to the delegates whom were selected using the cluster probability sampling. The results were analysed using simple regression and it shows that party elites, and incumbency factors negatively influence gubernatorial candidate selection. Party benefactor has a positive effect to the aspirant but has negative effect on the gubernatorial process in the North West of Nigeria. It is recommended that the party should overhaul its laws to impose stiffer penalties on those defaulting party laws of congresses. The election management body as well should disqualify defaulting aspirants and deregister any wanting party.