Nigerian Deliberative Town Halls: 2024
In early 2024, IDEA introduced its Deliberative Town Hall (DTH) model in Nigeria. On January 27, citizens in Bende met with Hon. Benjamin Kalu, Deputy Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives. On February 3, citizens in Baruten/Kaiama spoke with Hon. Mohammed Omar Bio. More than 1,200 citizens participated in the study, which examined their views of their representatives, democracy, and infrastructure priorities.
IDEA Fellow Marco Castradori, a PhD candidate at Princeton University who had lived in Nigeria, helped organize the project through relationships with elected officials. The research asked whether a model developed through IDEA’s work elsewhere could give Nigerian citizens a meaningful opportunity to engage with their representatives.
Making the town halls accessible
Working with NOIPolls, a Nigerian research organization, the team adapted the format to communities with limited internet access and varying literacy levels. Participants watched video briefings and gathered at local sites with reliable internet connections, while their representatives joined by live link. Local facilitators collected questions and passed them to the moderation team. The project retained the central features of IDEA’s model: balanced information, neutral moderation, and direct responses from elected officials. The study was designed as a randomized field experiment. Researchers surveyed citizens before and after the events, including both attendees and non-attendees, with Nigerian staff supporting participation in local languages.
What the research found
Approval of both representatives increased after the town halls, and respondents reported they were more likely to re-elect them. Attendees were more likely than non-attendees to describe their representatives as fair, trustworthy, qualified, and understanding of people like themselves.
The surveys also recorded stronger support for making good laws for the whole country. Citizens’ responses showed strong support for representatives who make decisions for the benefit of the country as a whole rather than simply distributing benefits to particular groups or communities.
Infrastructure priorities remained largely unchanged. In Bende, respondents placed healthcare and education ahead of roads and electricity, with a diagnostics center as their preferred specific project. In Baruten/Kaiama, healthcare and roads ranked higher, and respondents favored the University of Agriculture in Kaiama over the other education projects presented. Both constituencies preferred roads connecting different constituencies to roads within their own.
The study reached citizens across occupations, communities, and political affiliations. In Bende, 54.3 percent of those surveyed identified with no political party. In Baruten/Kaiama, the sample included substantial participation from both village and town residents and from both blue-collar and white-collar workers.
Attendees reported feeling hopeful and enthusiastic. They valued hearing other citizens’ views, reported greater respect for people who disagreed with them, and sometimes reconsidered their own positions. Nearly all said they would attend another DTH, although views were more divided on whether these events could change democracy in Nigeria.
One participant in Bende described the experience as “the first time I have ever felt like a real citizen.”
An unexpected finding beyond the town halls
Changes among non-attendees often mirrored those among attendees, including in approval of the representatives and attitudes toward democratic reform. This surprised the researchers, who had not seen the same pattern in nearly two decades of similar research. Follow-up interviews suggested that attendees shared their experiences with family, friends, and neighbors. That offers a possible explanation for how the conversations reached beyond the meeting sites, but it remains unconfirmed. Because both groups changed, the experiment could not isolate a clear effect of attending.
The findings suggest that citizens’ demand for a more responsive democracy may be stronger than their dissatisfaction with existing politics makes it appear. They also raise a question for further research: whether a meaningful encounter with a representative can influence political expectations beyond the people who take part.