Eniola Olayemi
National Bureau of Statistics has revealed that Youths constitute the highest population of registered voters at 51% of the registered population as revealed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
This was revealed by the Technical Adviser, Office of the Statiscan-General, Lola Talabi-Oni at the YIAGA Africa’s Presentation of Report on Youth Candidacy in the 2019 General Elections in Abuja yesterday
According to Talabi “Recently released figures by INEC revealed that consolidated registered number of voters for 2019 general elections are just over 84million”
This is even as she revealed that “Nigerian youth within the age group of 18-35 are the highest population of voters constituting over 51% of all registered voters while 20.6% of voters are students.
Presenting the Report, YIAGA Africa’s Watching the Vote, Project Coordinator, Cynthia Mbamalu and Board Member, YIAGA Africa, Ezenwa Nwagwu said 2019 General elections remain one of the most contested elections since the transition to democracy in 1999 with 91 registered political parties and 73 presidential candidates.
They added that “this is even as the 2019 elections records 1,904 candidates for the Senate, 4,680 for the House of Representatives, 1,066 for the Governorship and 14,583 for the State Assemblies”
Ezenwa said “beyond the high number of candidate’s highlights is a more competitive political environment with the increase in political debates and more importantly the number of young people registered as voters and contesting the elections. The release of the list of candidates by INEC for elections into the National Assembly (House of Representatives and Senate), Office of the President, Governors and State Houses of Assembly provides invaluable data and opportunity to carry out analysis of youth candidacy in the 2019 general elections”.
He added that with respect to the National Assembly and Presidential elections, the lists of candidates in 2019 indicates that the passage of the Not Too Young To Rule Law opened up the political space for increased youth participation in the House of Representatives and Presidential elections
Mrs. Mbamalu stated that in total 1,515 youth candidates representing 23% of all the candidates contested for seats in NASS, ten candidates or14% of Presidential Candidates were aged between 35-40, while youth candidates increased from increased 18% in the 2015 House of Representatives election to 27.4% in the 2019 House of Representatives election.
She added that the North West recorded the highest number of youth’s candidates for the House of Representatives and Senate Elections
YIAGA further revealed that for the governorship and state houses of assembly, the defining trends are that less than one tenth(9.8) of the candidates vying for the governorship of the federation are youth candidates compared to 22.9% contesting for deputy governor. It further added that majority of the youths candidates contesting for the positions of the governor and deputy are in the North West.
Others are that 53 political parties fielded youth candidates with 41.8% youth candidates vying for seats in state Houses of Assembly in all 36 states with 23.5% from the North West.
