User:Godot Oriaku/sandbox

VOTING IN NIGERIA; THE NON-PARTICIPATION OF THE YOUTH

In Nigeria, it is not out of place to say a large number of the Youth, especially those in the Urban areas hardly participate or come out in mass during election. Is has resulted to low participation in the areas of holding political offices as well as deciding who leads the country. Most public and political analyst over the years has associated this lackadaisical attitude to laziness and most recently, they've retorted to blaming social media; this is because most of the youth are predominantly on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. In every election year, it is always hard to find young candidate/aspirant coming out to contest for political positions; rather than change this narrative, the youths are usually on Twitter, ranting, and expressing their displeasure over the lineup of political aspirant, this doesn't end with ranting, on the day of the election, these supposed learned youths hardly turn out to vote.

Over the years, a few Nigerian learned youths have tried to educate and mobilize the youth to turn out during voting in order to decide the quality of leadership in the country; all to no avail. What seem to be the problem? Laziness, as widely professed? or the distraction from social media? The questions have lingered for too long.

The simple truth is, the low turnout of the youth has nothing to do with laziness. social media on other hand is not responsible for low turnout, but responsible for exposing them to the truth! The advent of the internet, access to smart phones, relatively cheap data and the availability of multiple online platforms have reduced the world to one small community with information readily available. They are now more enlightened and have seen how developed countries have been to transform their political and economic system by tapping into technology.

Some of these youths have been privilege to visit some of these Western countries and have seen how the system works, the question is, our leaders here in Nigeria visits these countries on a regular, have their children and wards school in some of these countries, why can they replicate what they enjoy in these countries here in Nigeria. A young Nigeria who, from the comfort of his/her home can order items, goods from anywhere in the world to his door mouth in matter of weeks and months; open a bank account and engage transaction worth millions of Nigeria is being asked to wake up as early as 4am WAT in the morning, rushed to an uncompleted or dilapidated building just to register for personal voters’ card? It appears barbaric and retrogressive.

THE CALL FOR A TOTAL UPGRADE OF THE NIGERIA ELECTORAL PROCESS; PVC

According to the International Centre for Investigating Reporting (ICIR) in a report published on the 15th of February, 2019 on a study that was conducted as part of the UNESCO Youth Civic Engagement Initiative came up with this position; A total of 789 respondents participated in the survey, and they identified 166 youth-led organisations to be actively involved in the promoting peaceful elections and political participation among young people. The study targeted young people between the ages of 18 and 45 who are members, staff, volunteers, or beneficiaries of programmes organised by youth-led organisations (ICIR, 2019). According to the report, those between the age of 18 and 35 years constitute the highest number of voters with 51.11 percent, which is 42.9 million voters of 84 million registered voters in Nigeria. Most worthy of note in that report is that 26.57 percent of the registered voters are students. What this tells us is that, a reasonable number of registered voters are the youths and yet, during elections, we do not record mass turnout of these numbers. The question once again is why?

Another aspect of that report that highlighted what the problem could be;

According to findings, 31.2 per cent of the respondents who do not possess a voter’s card were unable to participate in the registration exercise owing to time constraints and busy schedules as career professionals or students. Technical challenges on the part of INEC staff, disorderliness, long queue, and distance to PVC registration centres were also identified as reasons for not participating in the voter registration exercise (ICIR, 2019). As highlighted in the fourth paragraph, you cannot subject people to undue hardship, people who are witnessed, first all, how technology can be use to facilitate all of the process seamlessly to an archaic process that the world left behind years back. Recently, to registered a business in Nigeria, the proprietor(s) do not have to visit physically, the Nigerian Corporate Affairs Commission CAC, every transaction is done online, this include submitting passport photographs, valid document and most importantly, the individual’s signature. If this process is working for this government agency, why is it not working for the INEC?

The importantly document that every Nigerian must have is the National Identification Number NIN, sensitive and can incriminate the individual of it get into the hands of the wrong person. Be that as it may, you can work into any business centre in Nigeria to pre-register for this NIN before proceeding to the commission. In addition, personnel were deployed to the banks to facilitate the process, this means, I can simply work into my bank and be registered for the NIN. Simply, easy and straight forward. What happen to PVC registration? Why the trouble? Why are we stalling the process? If the process of obtaining the Personal Voter’s Card is not address and treatment as the CAC and NIN commissions have done in the past and now, there is no guarantee that there will be any improvement in voter’s turnout among the youth. This category of youth that will speak about have learnt to empower themselves via YouTube and other social media platforms; learn a craft, trade and be a chef by simply having access to a smart phone and data. In addition, engage themselves and have made go money and earn a living for themselves. Majority of them are now self-employed, making up to six digits by simply trading and communicating with the outside world from the comfort of the small cubicle. How do you convince this young youth to que for hours just to engage a process that shouldn’t take him 10 minutes online?

VOTERS EDUCATION

This has to change from the regular campaign of using the television and radio jingle to encourage the youths to come out in mass and vote. We must redirect this energy in ensuring that the registration for PVC is online based and most importantly, activate and integrate electronic voting now!

Reference https://www.icirnigeria.org/there-may-be-low-youth-voter-turnout-in-2019-general-elections-study-finds/