The challenge
Vote buying was widespread in Nigerian elections, but very few people ever reported it.
The case
Ahead of Nigeria's February 2023 presidential election, the Behavioural Insights Team, Equal Access International and Griot Studios worked with the writers of a long-running Hausa-language political drama on its eighth season. Its 13 episodes, aired October–December 2022, showed role-model characters refusing to sell their votes and reporting fraud by hotline and social media. In a randomized encouragement trial, 6,209 people in 16 northern states were paid through phone quizzes to watch either the drama or an unrelated comedy. Among people the payment got watching, the drama raised belief that reporting helps by 53 percentage points and belief that others in the community report by 68 points, though both estimates were very imprecise. No effect could be detected on knowing how to report or on calling the election commission's hotline.
Why the results were mixed
Role-model storylines shifted beliefs about reporting corruption, but those shifts did not turn into a comparably large rise in reporting. The authors attribute this partly to the trial's design: 41.0% of the drama group watched the drama, but so did 34.9% of the comedy group, a gap of only 6 percentage points, so the study could only identify large effects.
Sources
- Brown, D., Bothen, A. L., Krieger, M., et al. (2026). Using television drama to promote electoral corruption reporting: an evaluation in northern Nigeria. Journal of Experimental Political Science.
- Behavioural Insights Team. Broadcasting anti-corruption education to millions.
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