By Vanessa Obioha
A civil society organisation, Yiaga Africa, is campaigning for young Nigerians to not only contest but also win elections.
The organisation, which is committed to the promotion of democratic governance, human rights and civic engagement, recently launched the campaign to spur young Nigerians, particularly women to be more involved in politics.
The clamour for young people to run for elective positions in government was amplified in the 2019 elections, following the proposed ‘Not Too Young to Run’ bill by some select young and concerned Nigerians in 2016.
The bill, which was signed into law by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2018, specifically encouraged young people to run for public office.
The belief was that if the constitution made room for younger Nigerians to run for elective offices, they could help save the nation from the various problems confronting it. Before the law, only persons between the ages of 40 and 30 were eligible to run for elective positions.
Now, Yiaga Africa is changing the narrative by encouraging youths to participate and win elections through the ‘Run to Win’ campaign.
Speaking at a virtual conference to launch the initiative, the Director of Programmes, Yiaga Africa, Cynthia Mbamalu, said the ‘Not Too Young to Run’ initiative was a huge learning experience.
“One of the things that we have learned after the passage of the bill into law in 2018 was the very fertile ground for youth political participation,” Mbamalu said.
According to her, they recorded a significant number of youth participation in the 2019 elections, even though all that participated didn’t win their various offices, there were still some huge wins among the young population.
The main challenge, however, she noted, was with the political system, “because with the elections in 2019, we’ve also learned the major challenges young people face; from finance to a system that is hostile to their aspiration or even. We were even trying to get voters to understand that it was time for youth leadership”.
Against this background, the ‘Run to Win’ campaign, she said, is specifically designed to “inspire and support young men and women with competency, new character and capacity to run for office”,
The idea, she added, is to ensure that they contest and win elections. To achieve this, the group said it will be connecting young candidates with citizens in such a way that the candidates will be able to speak the language of the voters.
Another approach by the group is to become a support system for the young political aspirants and candidates, although they clarified that they will not be providing any form of financial support.
Also, the ‘Run to Win’ campaign will have offices in the Federal Capital Territory, Enugu and Lagos States. Town Hall meetings with critical stakeholders will be held in the locations to secure a commitment from them to support young people towards the 2023 general election. To sensitise youths, radio programmes about the campaign will be aired on select radio stations across the selected states.
While the campaign is generally for younger people, the group said it will be paying more attention to women.
Mbamalu stated that the 2019 elections showed low participation of women due to the peculiar challenges they face in the electoral process. For instance, she noted that out of the 101 under 35-year-olds females that participated in the last elections, only two won. She described it as a drop in the ocean of youth candidates.
“If we want to see an increase in the emergence of younger women in office or even women in office in general, then we would need to ensure that our support to young women is tailored around their needs, peculiarities of women candidacy, and also specially designed to support them through the period of elections, and to emerge,” she said.
The ‘Run to Win’ campaign is supported by the Voice, an innovative grant facility that supports rightsholders and groups facing marginalisation or discrimination in their efforts to exert influence in accessing productive and social services and political participation.
It is financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands and is implemented in 10 countries.
