Yiaga Targets Active Youth Participation in Leadership Processes

Gilbert Ekugbe

Worried over the low turnouts of youth participation in the last presidential elections in 2019, Yiaga Africa has announced plans to get over 600,000 youths registered for the 2023 elections across the six geopolitical zones in the country.
The move according to Yiaga is to maximise the huge population of the Nigerian youth to elect into office the right candidate with the right capacity to govern the affairs of the country.
The Executive Director, Yiaga Africa, Samson Itodo, at the roundtable on voter mobilisation for Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) and Permanent Voter Card (PVC) collection with Lagos-based Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), stated that to achieve this feat, it would be organising a campaign, the youths vote counts 2.0 concert scheduled to hold on the 11th of June 2022 at the Tabawa Balewa Square (TBS) flagging off from Lagos to Abuja, pointing out that the plan is to take the campaign to six Geo political zones.
“The plan is to go to six cities and the six geopolitical zones like we did in 2019 where we went round six universities where INEC was registering voters whilst the event was taking place and in 2019, through the youths vote count, INEC registered 25000 students. This time, we are raising it and our goal is to actually gets about 100000 young people and the voters register using the youths vote count campaign.
In his words: “The entry permit is your PVC or the voters registration slip. Registration will be taking place by Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and over 30 points registration points. So we invite unregistered voters to come there and register next week.”
According to him, the goal of the campaign is to reach 100,000 youths in each geo-political zones to register, saying that Yiaga would use the opportunity to influence voter behaviour and getting people interested and prepared to vote in the next election.
“So it is going to be an election for the young people and they have got to make the numbers count and the only way they can make the numbers count is if they collect their P V C and they vote for leaders of their choice, but we are also making another point that if 60 per cent of young people show up and there are 60 percent of uninformed young people, then Nigeria is not going to change,” he said.
Earlier, the Desk Officer, CSO, Liaison INEC, Lagos State, Buba Luka, said with level of collaboration between Yiaga and CSOs is aimed increasing the number of people that would come out to register and collect their PVCs.