The 2015 Presidential Elections and the Role of Nigerian Youth -Akin Rotimi
The elections have come and gone. Heroes and villains alike have
emerged as we move on as a country along the path of healing and
reconciliation after a most divisive election that stretched the nation
at the seams. The documentation of the history of the elections would
however be incomplete without the accounts of the role of Nigeria’s
youth.
To start with, young Nigerians below the age of 35 make up about 70 percent of the population. Nigeria’s unemployment rate is spiralling upwards, growing at 16% per year. The youth of the nation are the most impacted, with a youth unemployment rate over 50%. We are the demographic group that most bears the brunt of the effects of bad governance and failed campaign promises. It is therefore understandable that the youth in their numbers energized the campaigns of the two leading parties in the elections, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Young people were visible in the campaigns, working behind the scenes deploying intellectual capacity in supporting the parties in the drafting of speeches, position papers, manifestos, and other technical exertions. Others seized the opportunity of the spontaneity and lack of censure that Social Media offers to passionately support their parties and candidates, in many cases irreverently crossing the lines of decency in their rhetoric.
It is however unfortunate that the youth as a community lacked any form of unity and direction to band together as the largest voting bloc in the country and extract certain commitments from the political parties ahead of the elections. Politics in Nigeria is high stakes. Individuals and groups negotiate strategically on the strength of their numbers, geographical spread and other advantages. Sadly, while a remnant yet remains, the generality of Nigerian youth are so badly damaged by the effects of years of bad governance and the debasement of our value systems by our political elite who have exploited the vulnerabilities of the populace using religion, ethnicity and the enticement of filthy lucre for their selfish ends.
Thus, Nigerian youth participated in the historic build-up to the elections within the structures of the leading political parties, not as a powerful bloc but mostly as individuals – simple sheep in plain sight in the field where lions and wolves prey. Some rogue elements among the youth took advantage of this lacuna, amongst them prominent youth activists, and leaders of student bodies, who soiled their reputations, feathering their own nests by organizing phony events and bandying endorsements of candidates that proved to be of no value. A careful look at the pattern of voting in the March 28 presidential election leads to the conclusion that candidates and their political parties were indeed better off spending the bulk of their campaign resources and time engaging traditional rulers, tribal chiefs and clan heads, than youth activists, student leaders and entertainment celebrities.
We suffered a 6 months University Strike in the Education Sector, the youth-led entertainment industry suffers the brunt of a poorly regulated environment that allows pirates and industry hawks to feed fat on the talents and intellectual property of our artistes, our working class youth are subjected to exploitative and inhumane working conditions in the corporate world, the Chibok girls and hundreds of others are still unaccounted for, youth make up a huge percentage of the 17,000 people who lost their lives to the Boko Haram insurgency among other effects of the indiscretions and incompetencies of our leaders, yet we gave up our seat at the negotiating table.
I particularly feel sorry for so called social media activists, who in many cases are unemployed youth, who as pawns were engaged by both the APC and the PDP to fight each other in a battle they could never win. This is not to say there were no well meaning young people on both sides of the political divide who decently and intelligently used social media as a veritable tool for political mobilization for their candidates, but I speak about the misguided elements that in a bid to justify the stipends paid to them, fouled the social media space over the last couple of months with inanities, profanities and an embarrassing display of daftness that proves that common sense is no longer common.
Their contemporaries on the ground beholden to short-termism and the lure of the crumbs from the table of politicians similarly sold their birthright to act as thugs and jobbers that undermine the integrity of the electoral process. Others, indoctrinated along religious and ethnic lines by leaders who exploit high illiteracy rates and debilitating poverty, are primed as cannon fodder for electoral violence. It should be noted that in an election largely adjudged as generally peaceful, the Nigerian Human Rights Commission reports that there were varying acts of violence which resulted in at least 50 fatalities in Akwa Ibom, Borno, Bauchi, Edo, Gombe, Lagos, Osun, Rivers, and Yobe states on the day of the election. That is asides the 58 that were reported to have lost their lives due to pre-election violence.
Invariably, as far as the presidential election is concerned, we have come to the post-election phase. This is the phase when campaign managers strategically offload all liabilities as campaign funds begin to dwindle. This is the phase when the winning party begins to put structures in place to position the incoming administration to deliver on campaign promises. This is the phase the losing party begins to put structures in place to revamp party structures and basically design how they want to live to fight another day. This is the phase the political elite across partisan affiliations do away with those that cannot contribute to meeting their objectives. And since the youth did not use the power of numbers to forge their interests in the emerging order, the prospects of robust youth inclusion either in the incoming administration or in the cause of advancing the restructuring of the outgoing ruling party, remains slim.
So, as blocs of interests begin jostling for positions and stakes in this winner-takes-all political environment, the estimated 110 million strong Nigeria youth constituency lacks any negotiating leverage. At best, exceptional young people might be considered on their merit as individuals to participate on the margins, but we would continue to have old men as Ministers of Youth and 0% affirmation in federal cabinets. The very few young people that have been successfully elected into different positions across the country, particularly the legislature, owe their victories to their individual efforts or the support of contemptible political godfathers. I am not aware of any efforts, much less success, by Nigerian Youth within the political parties to negotiate support for young aspirants, many of whom couldn't even secure their parties’ tickets to contest due to the lack of funding or high level backing.
Consequently, a lot of young people who passionately participated in the political process would be licking their wounds over the next couple of weeks or months. Many of them, otherwise deeply religious people, have seared their consciences by consistently violating the tenets of their faith, destroyed relationships with friends and family, marred their reputations, appeared in viral videos as ethically bankrupt rented demonstrators, and generally hurt their future prospects by incurring inglorious cyber footprints that may haunt them in the future. I am certain it is not news to most of us that a forensic analysis of an individual’s cyber footprints is now a mandatory for most employers of labour.
As I conclude my lamentations, I urge Nigerian Youth to be more strategic in our engagement of the political process. It is not too late. We may want to start by identifying young people who have been elected and find ways to ensure they are well positioned to make a success of their mandates. We must also support as many more young people to be elected on April 11. It is also imperative that we start to consolidate within the political parties in order to have a common front in pushing our agenda forward. We need to decide and articulate what the youth agenda should be.
Young Nigerians eager to participate in politics and governance are advised to follow older political leaders and mentors with caution. If the relationship between you and your political mentor is merely transactional and not based on shared values and mutual respect; if your ‘leader’ is buying you guns and machetes and not books and jamb forms for you to get an education; if during your mentoring sessions he is more interested in ensuring you have enough internet bandwidth to abuse his enemies than he is in your professional growth and development; FLEE!
Young Nigerians need to be strategic. We must rise above parochial sentiments and the silos we like to lord over and create strong collaborative platforms even across partisan divides to robustly hold the incoming administration to account to prioritise issues that affect young people, and open up the space for greater youth inclusion in governance, and protection in politics. We need to speak up for a functional education system, we need to speak up for consideration of physically challenged and other special needs youth in development planning, we need to speak up for post-conflict peace-building and the re-integration of internally displaced persons in the North-East as well as the compensation of the youth that organized themselves into vigilantes that supported the Nigerian
Army in routing the insurgents, we need to speak up for qualitative healthcare so that our young ladies stop dying in the course of having babies, we need to speak up for jobs for unemployed youth, we need to speak up for a more assertive foreign policy disposition that caters to the needs of Nigerian youth in the diaspora, we need to speak up for justice for the youth who died during the Nigerian Immigration Service recruitment exercise, we need to speak up for bringing to justice instigators and perpetrators of election violence that caused the death of several youth corp members in previous elections, we need to speak up to bring to justice the trigger happy policeman who killed a young person during the fuel subsidy protests. Nigerian youth need to speak up for the right to speak up, be heard, and taken seriously.
It is to the credit of the womenfolk and a legacy of His Excellency Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, the outgoing President that the womenfolk achieved 35% affirmation in cabinet positions, with promises extracted during campaigns that the percentage would be increased if he was re-elected. Nigerian women correspondingly secured commitments from His Excellency General Muhammadu Buhari, the President-Elect, that his administration would surpass the unprecedented standard of women inclusion in governance. Nigerian youth have to take a cue from our women and up the game.
I believe in and trust our President-Elect, General Buhari to govern progressively with justice and equity. If truly democracy is about delivering the greatest good to the greatest number, despite the failings of this critical demographic group in positioning for advantage, the incoming administration would mainstream youth development across the broad spectrum of the agenda for national rejuvenation across every sector of our national life.
Akin Rotimi, a strategic communications, diplomacy and public policy professional writes from Lagos.
To start with, young Nigerians below the age of 35 make up about 70 percent of the population. Nigeria’s unemployment rate is spiralling upwards, growing at 16% per year. The youth of the nation are the most impacted, with a youth unemployment rate over 50%. We are the demographic group that most bears the brunt of the effects of bad governance and failed campaign promises. It is therefore understandable that the youth in their numbers energized the campaigns of the two leading parties in the elections, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Young people were visible in the campaigns, working behind the scenes deploying intellectual capacity in supporting the parties in the drafting of speeches, position papers, manifestos, and other technical exertions. Others seized the opportunity of the spontaneity and lack of censure that Social Media offers to passionately support their parties and candidates, in many cases irreverently crossing the lines of decency in their rhetoric.
It is however unfortunate that the youth as a community lacked any form of unity and direction to band together as the largest voting bloc in the country and extract certain commitments from the political parties ahead of the elections. Politics in Nigeria is high stakes. Individuals and groups negotiate strategically on the strength of their numbers, geographical spread and other advantages. Sadly, while a remnant yet remains, the generality of Nigerian youth are so badly damaged by the effects of years of bad governance and the debasement of our value systems by our political elite who have exploited the vulnerabilities of the populace using religion, ethnicity and the enticement of filthy lucre for their selfish ends.
Thus, Nigerian youth participated in the historic build-up to the elections within the structures of the leading political parties, not as a powerful bloc but mostly as individuals – simple sheep in plain sight in the field where lions and wolves prey. Some rogue elements among the youth took advantage of this lacuna, amongst them prominent youth activists, and leaders of student bodies, who soiled their reputations, feathering their own nests by organizing phony events and bandying endorsements of candidates that proved to be of no value. A careful look at the pattern of voting in the March 28 presidential election leads to the conclusion that candidates and their political parties were indeed better off spending the bulk of their campaign resources and time engaging traditional rulers, tribal chiefs and clan heads, than youth activists, student leaders and entertainment celebrities.
We suffered a 6 months University Strike in the Education Sector, the youth-led entertainment industry suffers the brunt of a poorly regulated environment that allows pirates and industry hawks to feed fat on the talents and intellectual property of our artistes, our working class youth are subjected to exploitative and inhumane working conditions in the corporate world, the Chibok girls and hundreds of others are still unaccounted for, youth make up a huge percentage of the 17,000 people who lost their lives to the Boko Haram insurgency among other effects of the indiscretions and incompetencies of our leaders, yet we gave up our seat at the negotiating table.
I particularly feel sorry for so called social media activists, who in many cases are unemployed youth, who as pawns were engaged by both the APC and the PDP to fight each other in a battle they could never win. This is not to say there were no well meaning young people on both sides of the political divide who decently and intelligently used social media as a veritable tool for political mobilization for their candidates, but I speak about the misguided elements that in a bid to justify the stipends paid to them, fouled the social media space over the last couple of months with inanities, profanities and an embarrassing display of daftness that proves that common sense is no longer common.
Their contemporaries on the ground beholden to short-termism and the lure of the crumbs from the table of politicians similarly sold their birthright to act as thugs and jobbers that undermine the integrity of the electoral process. Others, indoctrinated along religious and ethnic lines by leaders who exploit high illiteracy rates and debilitating poverty, are primed as cannon fodder for electoral violence. It should be noted that in an election largely adjudged as generally peaceful, the Nigerian Human Rights Commission reports that there were varying acts of violence which resulted in at least 50 fatalities in Akwa Ibom, Borno, Bauchi, Edo, Gombe, Lagos, Osun, Rivers, and Yobe states on the day of the election. That is asides the 58 that were reported to have lost their lives due to pre-election violence.
Invariably, as far as the presidential election is concerned, we have come to the post-election phase. This is the phase when campaign managers strategically offload all liabilities as campaign funds begin to dwindle. This is the phase when the winning party begins to put structures in place to position the incoming administration to deliver on campaign promises. This is the phase the losing party begins to put structures in place to revamp party structures and basically design how they want to live to fight another day. This is the phase the political elite across partisan affiliations do away with those that cannot contribute to meeting their objectives. And since the youth did not use the power of numbers to forge their interests in the emerging order, the prospects of robust youth inclusion either in the incoming administration or in the cause of advancing the restructuring of the outgoing ruling party, remains slim.
So, as blocs of interests begin jostling for positions and stakes in this winner-takes-all political environment, the estimated 110 million strong Nigeria youth constituency lacks any negotiating leverage. At best, exceptional young people might be considered on their merit as individuals to participate on the margins, but we would continue to have old men as Ministers of Youth and 0% affirmation in federal cabinets. The very few young people that have been successfully elected into different positions across the country, particularly the legislature, owe their victories to their individual efforts or the support of contemptible political godfathers. I am not aware of any efforts, much less success, by Nigerian Youth within the political parties to negotiate support for young aspirants, many of whom couldn't even secure their parties’ tickets to contest due to the lack of funding or high level backing.
Consequently, a lot of young people who passionately participated in the political process would be licking their wounds over the next couple of weeks or months. Many of them, otherwise deeply religious people, have seared their consciences by consistently violating the tenets of their faith, destroyed relationships with friends and family, marred their reputations, appeared in viral videos as ethically bankrupt rented demonstrators, and generally hurt their future prospects by incurring inglorious cyber footprints that may haunt them in the future. I am certain it is not news to most of us that a forensic analysis of an individual’s cyber footprints is now a mandatory for most employers of labour.
As I conclude my lamentations, I urge Nigerian Youth to be more strategic in our engagement of the political process. It is not too late. We may want to start by identifying young people who have been elected and find ways to ensure they are well positioned to make a success of their mandates. We must also support as many more young people to be elected on April 11. It is also imperative that we start to consolidate within the political parties in order to have a common front in pushing our agenda forward. We need to decide and articulate what the youth agenda should be.
Young Nigerians eager to participate in politics and governance are advised to follow older political leaders and mentors with caution. If the relationship between you and your political mentor is merely transactional and not based on shared values and mutual respect; if your ‘leader’ is buying you guns and machetes and not books and jamb forms for you to get an education; if during your mentoring sessions he is more interested in ensuring you have enough internet bandwidth to abuse his enemies than he is in your professional growth and development; FLEE!
Young Nigerians need to be strategic. We must rise above parochial sentiments and the silos we like to lord over and create strong collaborative platforms even across partisan divides to robustly hold the incoming administration to account to prioritise issues that affect young people, and open up the space for greater youth inclusion in governance, and protection in politics. We need to speak up for a functional education system, we need to speak up for consideration of physically challenged and other special needs youth in development planning, we need to speak up for post-conflict peace-building and the re-integration of internally displaced persons in the North-East as well as the compensation of the youth that organized themselves into vigilantes that supported the Nigerian
Army in routing the insurgents, we need to speak up for qualitative healthcare so that our young ladies stop dying in the course of having babies, we need to speak up for jobs for unemployed youth, we need to speak up for a more assertive foreign policy disposition that caters to the needs of Nigerian youth in the diaspora, we need to speak up for justice for the youth who died during the Nigerian Immigration Service recruitment exercise, we need to speak up for bringing to justice instigators and perpetrators of election violence that caused the death of several youth corp members in previous elections, we need to speak up to bring to justice the trigger happy policeman who killed a young person during the fuel subsidy protests. Nigerian youth need to speak up for the right to speak up, be heard, and taken seriously.
It is to the credit of the womenfolk and a legacy of His Excellency Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, the outgoing President that the womenfolk achieved 35% affirmation in cabinet positions, with promises extracted during campaigns that the percentage would be increased if he was re-elected. Nigerian women correspondingly secured commitments from His Excellency General Muhammadu Buhari, the President-Elect, that his administration would surpass the unprecedented standard of women inclusion in governance. Nigerian youth have to take a cue from our women and up the game.
I believe in and trust our President-Elect, General Buhari to govern progressively with justice and equity. If truly democracy is about delivering the greatest good to the greatest number, despite the failings of this critical demographic group in positioning for advantage, the incoming administration would mainstream youth development across the broad spectrum of the agenda for national rejuvenation across every sector of our national life.
Akin Rotimi, a strategic communications, diplomacy and public policy professional writes from Lagos.
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