Page navigation keeps landing on same page

do you use a custom quey in the front page? (index.php ?)

the pagination parameter might be missing.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/query_posts#Pagination_Parameters

example how to integrate the ‘paged’ parameter:

<?php wp_reset_query();
$paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1; // pagination

$args = array(
'cat' => 9,
'paged' => $paged
);
query_posts($args); 	?>

<?php if (have_posts()) : ..............

example only – your query might look different.

if you have trouble integrating this, paste the code of your template file into a http://wordpress.pastebin.com/ and post the link to it here.