AHEAD of the Abuja Municipal Area Council elections in February 2022, young aspirants eyeing elective positions have listed their challenges.
The aspirants identified insecurity, poor financial base and logistic support as part of the challenges they are facing in their bid to occupy political offices.
Some of the young aspirants drawn from different political parties, raised these concerns under the Not Too Young to Win platform coordinated by civil society organisation, Yiaga Africa.
At a town hall meeting held at Sheraton Hotels on Friday in Abuja, some of the aspirants lamented that with just some few months to the elections, they are still being limited by funding challenges as they find it difficult to engage in effective mobilisation, even when they know they have better ideas and programmes that would benefit the electorate.
According to them, most of the older generation of politicians have not got used to seeing young candidates vying for elective offices in the country; hence they see the young aspirants as “jokers.”
An aspirant under the platform of African Democratic Congress, Juliet Iyakhere, faulted the structures that exist within political parties, saying most of them lack internal democracy.
According to her, once this trend is looked into “our democracy would be a lot more strengthened.”
Another aspirant under Young Progressive Party, Micheal Odoh, insisted that insecurity bedeviling the country also play out in the electoral processes, as young candidates hardly get the needed security when campaigning.
Other aspirants and supporters who fall within the ages of 20 to 35 noted that most often than not, young disabled persons and women have not been effectively mainstreamed into the electoral process, even though they constitute 47 percent of the population in the FCT.
Other challenges listed include low voter registration, visibility of candidates and challenge of polling agent per polling units, which is enormous.
Programme Manager, Governance and Development, Yiaga Africa, Ibrahim Farouk said the whole concept of putting the programme together, tagged: “Run To Win Campaign” is to support young women and men with competence, capacity and character to contest and win elections in Nigerian.
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