…youth charged to join race for elective offices

By Gabriel Ewepu

AHEAD of the 2023 general elections, a non-profit making organization, Yiaga Africa, Thursday, launched the ‘Run To Win’ Campaign project.

The ‘Run To Win’ Campaign with theme ‘Acing the hurdles of vying for political office; Running an effective campaign and winning elections’, was launched virtually, and it is to serve as a platform to encourage credible, competent and visionary young people to come into the race to contest for various elective offices through the ballot.

According to the Director of Programmes, Yiaga Africa, Cynthia Mbamalu, ‘Run To Win’ is a campaign dedicated to supporting young women and men with competence, capacity and character to contest and win elections in Nigerian.

Mbamalu further stated that it was borne from the demands from the ‘Not Too Young to Run Campaign’, and that the ‘Run To Win’ campaign is designed to support youth political aspirants to run issue-based campaigns, win elections and occupy elective offices.

The ‘Run To Win’ Campaign project is sponsored by Voice, which is implemented in 10 countries and coordinating office in The Hague, and funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Netherlands.   

 She said: “It is actually the organisation’s reflection excitement over the past couple of days just planning, working to see how we insure that this project is not just a project really achieve its mean goal.

“For Yiaga Africa, the Not Too Young To Run Movement was a huge opportunity and still a huge running experience for us, and one of the things we have learnt after passing the Bill into law in 2018 was the very fertile ground for our youth’s political participation.

“We saw in 2019 elections how young persons including those with physical disability different works of life supported the movement but did not just stop there but they owned the movement, idea of youth political participation, and we saw that level of consciousness amongst young people with the number of young people who aspired to contest for office and post the party primaries we saw reduction in number but we still have reasonable good percentage of young candidates, and we have done some work with some of the young candidates.

“However, post the elections, not all young candidates emerged as winners of the elections but we had some major wins and we think that 2019 elections show us the importance of working together with young vibrant people, young women especially, and how there is a lot of political interest amongst them not to say youth apathy.

She also made it clear that, “Yiaga Africa does not give money, and we can’t give funding to candidates.”

Also in another remarks, the Project Coordinator, Voice Nigeria Team, Ijeoma Oku, said, “Voice Programme is based on the principle of ‘Nothing About Us Without Us’ and everything we do is about the right holders.

This principle is paramount to us and is about the right holders are the reason why we gathered, and for this project is for young Nigerians, and if it were a physical event they will be the ones on the high table.

“It has been a tough journey for Yiaga African and Voice Team because you have the expertise and competence, and we are just there distributing money. Thank you for taking this grant.

“Voice Programme is not an acronym and that is the name of the programme voice is just what it is, and it is the Dutch Government’s way of responding to ‘Leave No One Behind’.

“For the government of Netherlands, Voice is one of the programmes they created in response to that call.

“We have three thematic areas; space for political participation for active citizenship and that is where this project falls in.

“When the proposal came we grabbed it with two hands because is around the third thematic area- space for political participation for active citizenship.

“The proposal also focuses on young people which we also work with young people.

“Yiaga Africa through the Dutch Government has done this much but we still have a whole lot to do.”

Meanwhile, the Programme Manager, Yiaga Africa, Ibrahim Faruk, said, “The ‘Run To Win’ project is to increase the political participation, especially for young men and women for the electoral and decision making processes

“We are going be working in three major areas for this project including Enugu and Lagos States including the Federal Capital Territory, FCT.

“For Yiaga Africa and Voice, we wish we could be in every single State done this.”

As part of the launch, there was panelist discussion, which was moderated by ace broadcaster, Affi Bassey, had Hon Okwu Otaka, Obinna Ebimirin, Theresa Tekena, and others who pointed that politics is not played on social media; loyalty to leadership of political parties is needed; play physical politics at ward level; young people in political parties should support fellow youths aspiring to contest and win; start early to create awareness, create plan, decide on which party to join, have structured message, have campaign slogan, identify your challenges.