GASPRO International Journal of Eminent Scholars

ABSTRACT

Effective involvement of citizens in the selection of leaders is critical to good governance and development of any society. Nigeria’s political space is debilitated by a number of issues including the highjack of political and democratic machineries by a few rent-seeking and inept players. This has resulted in poor governance, lack of trust in the entire system and apathy on the part of citizens. With the mandate of the media to motivate and mobilize the masses for enlightened participation in the political process, bearing in mind that privately owned media pander to the whims of the highest bidders especially during political cycles, and based on public sphere theory,  the need to examine the success level of public service broadcast media organizations in motivating and mobilizing the youths in the South-South region of Nigeria to be actively involved in the political process threw up itself as Nigeria inches into another election year. Using the survey method, three states in the region were randomly selected, from where 384 respondents evenly distributed were drawn through a multi-stage process to respond to the questionnaire items designed to answer the research questions. Three focus groups made up of 25 participants in total, were also set up in the three states for detailed discussion of the issues. At the end of the study, youths in the South-South region of Nigeria were not adequately mobilized for active involvement in politics, public service broadcast organizations were found not to mobilize the youths in the region for political participation and as a result, the broadcast stations were not seen to have succeeded in fulfilling their mandate in this regard. Recommendations made among others, include removing public service broadcast media and regulatory agencies from the financial and administrative control of government for effective service and supervision, mounting of pressure on the broadcast stations by civil society groups and non-governmental organizations to ensure that they deliver on their mandates and the establishment of partnership between promoters of democracy and the media stations towards the delivery of altruistic media service in line with the mandate of the organizations.