The Young Candidate: Nimchak Nansak, a part-time teacher vying for a seat in Plateau assembly

Rust-covered beds, shortage of personnel, and mediocre attention being given to patients all rape constituents of Langtang north in Plateau of adequate healthcare.

To salvage the situation, Nimchak Nansak fastened his girdle, swore a communal oath and carried the heavy cross of contesting for a seat in the Plateau state assembly, where he believes he can contribute to the rehabilitation of his constituency.

For Nansak, it’s not a sudden dive.

As a 33-year-old who has lived in Langtang North all his life, the pain, agony and needs of his people motivated him to join the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2014 with the aim of causing radical economic change.

Not given to idleness and engrossed with a sense of purpose, he started by participating in ward politics, rose to the position of youth leader and was further elevated as the party secretary in his local government. Nansak has also helped to coordinate campaigns since 2014, until this present moment when he decided to take the bull by the horns and contest for a seat in the state assembly.

FARMER AND PART-TIME TEACHER

Running a poultry farm in pari passu with part-time teaching at Federal Government Girls College, Langtang, Nansak said he saved his salaries with the aim of investing it all in the contest he now finds himself today.

After his stint at the government college, he moved to St. Peter’s Academy as a part-time teacher, while also taking students in the community on extra-curricular classes.

Nansak told TheCable that he is passionate about giving back to society and has been able to minimally achieve that by transferring knowledge to students.

Using his experience as a graduate of mathematics and computer science education from the University of Agriculture, Makurdi, he has been able to train hundreds of community youths in areas pertaining to science and agriculture.

“I moved into agriculture, and I also engaged in poultry farming, from there I was able to raise money for forms for the office and also do other things for the campaign,” he told TheCable.

YOUTHS AS GODFATHERS

“An unsoiled politician and progressive at heart” is the description that best fits Nimchak Abel Nansak, who revealed that his strongest support and “godfathers” are the youths in the community who have voluntarily taken his ambition as their personal project because they believe in his competence, compassion and vision for the community.

He said: “I’m running the election with my personal funds. The youths in my society are my godfathers. They are the best asset I have. They see it as their own dream and project.”

Nansak said his goals for the youths are already “encapsulated into bills” that will “cushion the effect of challenges from the youth perspective”.

He intends to create “an industrial hub for the youth that will provide non-interest loans and an industrial trust fund. Any youth that is accessing this fund will not be paying any interest on such loans”.

He said the loans will be designed in a way that will give priority to those interested in agriculture, while also catering to others with different strokes of dreams in mind.

“Youths can access this loan and go into agriculture or do so many other things that will help them to do great things economically and also have enough money to contest for elective positions because it is not easy for youths to contest for these positions without the needed finance,” he said.

FOCUS ON HEALTHCARE AND VIABLE AGRICULTURAL SEEDS

The ability to streamline goals is a superpower, and this is one strength that Nimsak appears to have leveraged. The politician said he intends to transform the healthcare sector and provide valuable farm seeds to make the agricultural endeavours of his constituents lucrative.

“In the healthcare system, I intend to widen the scope of basic healthcare in the constituency in terms of health insurance and secure more payments for our people. I will make healthcare provisions for people that are less privileged, and people that are not economically stable,” he told TheCable.

“People are not farming crops that are economically viable, so if given the opportunity I want to change the perspective of farming on this side of the world by ensuring that I provide crops that have a value chain and are economically viable like soya beans. I intend to provide these seeds.

“I will also ensure that I purchase fertiliser for them as part of my constituency development and provide agro-allied chemicals to be able to cultivate large portions of land. This can be done when we have clusters of women groups, youth groups and community groups.”

Nimsak, though a member of the ruling party, considers himself one with the impoverished, and a member of the masses who shares the hurting pinch of fuel scarcity, abysmal power supply and insecurity.

He would rather go fist-to-fist with the status quo than throw in the towel and leave his community in the same state.

This publication is produced under the Ready To Run initiative of Yiaga Africa in partnership with The Cable  and supported by the European Union under the European Union Support to Democratic Governance Project (EU-SDGN)