Advocate Raises Alarm on Structural Barriers Keeping Nigerian Youth and Women Out of Politics
Ambassador Zainab Aderinwale, Youth and Women Advocate, appears as a featured panelist on Inclusion 4 Democracy Episode Six on LTV8 Lagos, October 28, 2021. The programme was funded by the European Union and International Media Support, IMS, as part of a public sensitization initiative on the inclusion of women, youth, and persons with disabilities in Nigeria's electoral and governance process.
By Tolulope Oke
At a European Union-funded television forum on LTV8 Lagos, youth and women’s advocate Ambassador Zainab Aderinwale argued that political exclusion in Nigeria is not merely a financial problem, it is a structural one
The question seemed simple enough on the surface. But when it landed before a panel of advocates and youth leaders on a European Union-funded television programme in Lagos last Thursday, it opened a conversation that went far beyond money.
“Are Nigerian Youths Too Poor to Run for Political Offices?” That was the topic of Episode Six of Inclusion 4 Democracy, a public sensitization programme broadcast live on LTV8 from the station’s studio in Agidingbin, Ikeja. The programme, funded by the European Union and the International Media Support, IMS, forms part of a broader initiative promoting the inclusion of women, youth, and persons with disabilities in Nigeria’s electoral and governance process.
Among the panelists invited to address the question was Ambassador Zainab Aderinwale, a youth and women’s advocate whose contribution to the discussion challenged what she described as a dangerously narrow reading of the problem facing young Nigerians who aspire to public office.
“The real question is not whether Nigerian youth can afford to run,” Ambassador Aderinwale said during the session. “The real question is whether the system has been designed to include them at all.”
Her intervention drew a distinction between the visible cost of political participation, nomination fees, campaign expenses, and the logistical demands of running for office and what she characterised as the deeper, less-discussed structural barriers that keep young Nigerians and women out of governance long before they reach the ballot.
Nigeria’s political landscape, she argued, has evolved in ways that privilege incumbency, financial access, and network connections over merit, civic commitment, or policy vision. For young Nigerians without established political networks or access to significant capital, the path to elective office is obstructed not by one wall but by many, each reinforcing the next.
“We talk about the cost of forms,” she said. “But we do not talk enough about the cost of invisibility. The cost of not being in the room where decisions are made. The cost of a system that was not designed with you in mind.”
Her intervention drew a distinction between the visible cost of political participation and what she characterised as the deeper structural barriers that keep young Nigerians and women out of governance long before they reach the ballot.
The episode also examined the compounding effect of these barriers on women and persons with disabilities, two groups whose underrepresentation in Nigerian politics extends beyond economics into culture, institutional design, and the absence of deliberate inclusion frameworks within political parties and electoral bodies.
Fellow panelist Comrade Popoola Oyeyemi, Organising Secretary of the Youth Advancement Initiative Lagos, JAIL, echoed the call for structural reform, pointing to the need for political parties to take seriously their obligations under Nigeria’s constitutional framework to promote the participation of marginalised groups in governance.
The Inclusion 4 Democracy programme, now in its sixth episode, has consistently used the LTV8 platform to bring these conversations into public view at a time when Nigeria’s political environment remains characterised by high barriers to entry for non-incumbent candidates and historically low representation of women and youth in elective positions.
Ambassador Aderinwale’s participation in the forum reflected a body of advocacy work spanning governance, youth development, and women’s economic empowerment. Her presence on the panel as a named expert and titled advocate underscored the growing recognition of independent civil society voices in Nigeria’s public discourse on democratic inclusion.
“Inclusion is not a gift that governance gives to the people,” she said in her closing remarks on the programme. “It is a right that the people must demand, and that our systems must be rebuilt to honour.”
Inclusion 4 Democracy continues to air on LTV8 as part of its mandate to promote informed civic engagement across Nigeria. The programme is supported by the European Union and the International Media Support as part of a broader commitment to democratic strengthening in the region.
