NGO Seeks Active Participation of Youths in Politics
NGO Seeks Active Participation of Youths in Politics
Blessing Ibunge in Port Harcourt
A civil society organizations(CSO), We The People, has urged Nigerian youths to participate actively in the nation’s politics, especially as the 2027 general election draws nearer.
This is as the organisation has embarked on engagement and workshop programmes with youths across the various states through the #IncludeNaija project.
Speaking at a community youth engagement on Governance and Human Right in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, yesterday, Executive Director, We The People, Ken Henshaw, mentioned that the project aims to build resilience among youths on the need for them to actively participate in Nigeria’s electoral space.
He said the youths must hold democratic institutions accountable.
“Our idea in this project is to ensure that young people realise the power they have. They often forget they have the power in numbers, the power in their strength, their resilience, their ability.
#IncludeNaija aims at building or reminding them of that power and giving them the skills it takes to act based on that power. As we go into 2027, we are telling the youths, participate, demand, act, you will demand inclusion,” he said.
Henshaw disclosed that participants were drawn from over 20 different communities cutting across four different local government areas, including Ogbo/Akpor, PHALGA, Okrika, amongst others in the state .
“It is an advocacy programme that aims at doing two things. Number one, ensuring that young people can fully participate in a meaningful way in the politics of their country and their states. The idea is to engage young people and make them active in terms of contesting election, in terms of voting, in terms of even holding their political leaders accountable.
The second thing this project aims to do is to ensure that the rights of young people are protected at all times. This project aims to also give young people the skills and the tools to hold law enforcement officers especially police accountable and to protect the democratic rights of human beings.”
He said: “While we understand that there are young people who are fraudsters, that does not mean that every young person is a fraudster and that also does not mean that you can go up about arresting, detaining and intimidating people without recourse to due process of the law.”
“That is what this project aims to do, bringing these communities together because we understand that these young people are the primary targets and they lack capacity to advocate for themselves,” Henshaw explained.
He regretted that the two major political parties in Nigeria, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC), have not encouraged youth participation in elections because of exorbitant prices of nomination forms.
“2027 is by the corner. While young people in this country have the highest number of votes they are never represented in politics. Look at Nigeria there’s no young person currently in a position of leadership as it relates the 36 state governors but youths were 37 million voters in the last elections.
“How can you take up the nomination forms for various political offices in the country up to N100 million. How long will it take for a 26, 27, or 30 year old person to muster that amount of money and be able to risk it to contest an election.
So we are simply saying that the cost of nomination from the political parties currently, the major political party, I speak about the APC the PDP are not in tandem with the policy of engaging and promoting youth participation. It’s difficult for a young man or a young woman without the background, the financial family background or who has not participated in theft or fraud to buy those nomination forms.
“You have politicians who are scoring F9 in WAEC who cannot prove their educational qualification in election, but you have young people who have got multiple degrees and have shown resilience and ability in different regards not able to even contest the selection and we are saying that any society or political party that does that, it’s a misnomer,” he stated.
Earlier, John Atsu, a rights activist, informed that the #IncludeNaija Project is a three-year civil society initiative in Nigeria, co-funded by the European Union and Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (RLS).
According to him, the initiative focuses on addressing issues such as systemic exclusion of youth in governance, environmental justice for communities affected by resource extraction, and accountability for state and corporate abuses, through workshops, conferences, and advocacy efforts in Nigeria.
The post NGO Seeks Active Participation of Youths in Politics appeared first on THISDAYLIVE.
Blessing Ibunge in Port Harcourt A civil society organizations(CSO), We The People, has urged Nigerian youths to participate actively in the nation’s politics, especially as the 2027 general election draws nearer.
The post NGO Seeks Active Participation of Youths in Politics appeared first on THISDAYLIVE.
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