International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Research

Authors
Chukwuemeka Egberase Okuchukwu

Abstract
The study aimed at understanding the youth, political violence and Nigerian politics with a view to critically analyzing why Nigerian politicians use the youth to perpetuate violence in Nigerian politics. The youth remains a focus when understanding political violence and Nigerian politics. The paper adopted historical method and also secondary data source in data collection and analysis, focusing on already completed work of other researchers, authors and scholars. The study also adopts the Marxian Primitive Accumulation of Wealth model to explain the reasons why Nigerian politicians use the youth to perpetuate violence in Nigerian politics. It was observed that Nigerian politicians use youths as political thugs or militias which are well organized and structured and their membership comprises mostly youths who have become political thugs and perform sundry activities such as the harassment, intimidation, maiming and the alleged killing of political enemies. However, it was discovered that politicians tend to use youths as political thugs to perpetrate violence in Nigerian politics as a result of corruption and self enrichment. The paper also made recommendations to the problem.