Carrington Fellows challenge young Nigerians to participate in politics

The Carrington Youth Fellowship Initiative (CYFI), a youth-based initiative established by the United States Consulate, Lagos, has called on young people to participate more in politics in Nigeria. 

CYFI, which was set up to promote civil liberty, good governance, public health, education and entrepreneurship,  recently launched its national campaign for young people to get their permanent voter cards (PVC). 

Olusola Owonikoko, the president of Carrington Fellowship alumni association, said “CYFI brings together Nigerian youth of exceptional skills and experience to design and implement projects that will have a positive impact on the society”. 

“In line with the coming elections, we today launched the PVC Drive Campaign to promote the participation of young people in electoral processes by sensitizing and mobilising them to register, get their PVCs and use it wisely in the coming elections.”

The focus of the PVC Drive is aimed at addressing the barriers to young peoples’ participation in electoral processes.

The campaign kicked off with a panel discussion that featured four versatile contributors, while the discussion was moderated by award winning journalist, Mayowa Tijani.

Engaging participants from several parts of the nation who attended the campaign launch held via Zoom, Azeezat Yishawu, co-founder of ConstitutionLAB, and a Carrington Fellow, commended INEC for the laudable online registration process which so far has been commendable.

However, she highlighted the need to maintain a great level of coordination till the end of the electioneering process. 

Yishawu drew attention to Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) working to get young Nigerians without smartphones or access to technology in underserved communities registered.

Gabriel Okeowo, CEO BudgIT Foundation who was also on the panel, applauded INEC for doing its homework with the continuous online registration process for PVC, highlight the fact that 80 percent of the process was online and only 20 percent offline.

According to the BudgIT boss, young people are the most influential stakeholders in the electoral process. challenging them to value their vote and be strategic about its use.

He called on INEC to employ technology in the collation of election results in the near future.

Okeowo also advised INEC to eradicate challenges that disenfranchise eligible voters from exercising their civic rights.

He asked INEC to bring polling units to places that help people with multi-layered challenges. 

“Why can’t we have a polling unit in our hospitals?” he asked. 

Mary Ikoku, a communications strategist, expressed her excitement in seeing young Nigerians who recently turned eighteen getting the opportunity to register to vote online.

“This will certainly result in a major  leap in the number of registered voters, and hopefully increase political participation amongst young people”, she said. 

Ikoku advised young people to “focus on the real issues, be intentional and very strategic about your involvement in politics”. 

She said the older generation are not enemies to young people and should rather be seen and engaged as allies.

Ikoku expressed the strong need for  INEC to enshrine its electoral regulations in the constitution through the lawmakers in other to avoid legal challenges in the future.

Aside from the lack of trust in the electoral system, Hamzat Lawal, Founder/CEO of Connected Development (CODE), explained that one of the major barriers to political participation among young people is the lack of understanding of the political space.

Lawal, who was represented by Busayo Morakinyo, said poverty, and in some cases, lack of education stand as barriers against young people seeking to participate in politics.

According to him, the educated young Nigerians must find creative ways to reach out to those with little or no education and share with them the vision for a great nation.