Abstract:

Communicating to staff and members of political party is no small task. This challenge is further complicated in political parties that have wide geographic spread, whereby the national headquarter is responsible for sending the same messages to state or local offices in geographically dispersed locations. The broad objective of this study, therefore, is to interrogate the contemporary role of organisational communication in electoral politics. Specifically, however, the study seeks to establish the relationship between message development and political party efficiency. In pursuit of this objective, the survey method of research was employed to collect data from 278 staff and supporters of ten political parties in the six geo-political zones of Nigeria. The data were analysed with some descriptive statistics, such as frequencies, tables, percentages etc. Also, some hypotheses were formulated and tested with regression and Pearson’s product movement correlation. The findings revealed among other things that, effective communication among a political party’s hierarchies is a desideratum for success at the polls. Besides, organisational communication was found to influence and motivate the behavioural performance of party staff and supporters. It is therefore, recommended that political parties should strengthen their internal communication channels in order to achieve electoral success.