Yiaga Africa Faults Cost of Politics

Gilbert Ekugbe

Yiaga Africa has lamented over the declining rate in youth candidacy in Nigeria’s political system, blaming the declining rate on the cost of politics, the lack of internal democracy in parties and the highly commercialised candidate selection process in the nation.
At a political organising lab in Lagos, the Executive Director, Yiaga Africa, Samson Itodo, said between 2019 and 2022, the level of youth candidacy declined from 34 per cent to 28 per cent.
He said the political organising lab was to support young candidates who are running in the 2023 elections, adding that it the political lab is part of Yiaga Africa’s generational responsibility to provide technical support while also helping them understand the procedures as they prepare for elections.

“So this lab is just geared towards equipping them with a kind of skill that they require to win elections and this is part of our turn up democracy project where we have been hosting the convergence across the country for youth candidates just to inspire them and also just to let them know that there is a generation of young people who are determined to change the face of politics and they represent that new cadre of leaders that Nigeria needs to transform as well as solve the leadership crisis that we face,” he said.

In his words: “We are just understanding the kind of challenges that they face. Some of them just within the campaign period, have had to grapple with things like oppression, they have had to grapple with unexpected expectations from people. These challenges that they all expressed are challenges that we identify as part of the electoral process and we hope that they will understand how to better manage these challenges.” He added: “We just sharing experiences amongst ourselves because we have a group of young people who ran for office in the past and also won and they are also here to share those experiences and we believe these experiences, if shared cannot only inspire but also help the candidates who are running. Our expectation is that this will produce more leaders that can fix the problems that Nigeria grapples with and we strongly believe that these young people here and the ones in other parts of the country have what it takes to fix Nigeria.”

Fielding questions from journalists on how the candidates were selected for the political lab, he said they are candidates who are on and meet the age its age requirements, pointing out that Yiaga Africa is biased for young people between 25 and 29 years old.
“Yiaga Africa is non-partisan entity, so we ensure that it is a representation of all the parties and we also look at the age because we led the struggle for the Not Too Young to Run Campaign. For us at Yiaga Africa, we focus on capacity, competence as well as character because these are the qualities for the kind of leadership that we desire this critical moment of our democratic expedition,” he stated.

He highlighted that one of the greatest challenges that young people face in their political aspiration is the resistance from the society about youth leadership, stressing that some members of society are still making arguments that young people are not experienced to run for political offices in the country.

“I think the argument is obsolete. I think people show up there game when they speak against youth participation because if we say young people do not have the experience, go and look at the tech sector, go and look at the agricultural sector. Go and look at different aspects of our national life and see how young people are actually transforming society,” he urged.
Also speaking, one of the candidates running for the position of a member, Lagos State House of Assembly, Alimosho Constituency 2, New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP), Abiodun Adebowale, said the clinic has been very educative and informative, saying that her participation at the programme has further increased her hope that there is a possibility for winning in the forth coming elections.