A recent report and fact sheet on Youth and Women candidacy produced by Yiaga Africa has revealed the decline in the candidacy of women and youths from the 2019 general election to the upcoming 2023 general elections.
The fact sheet, which provided critical findings from the analysis of the 2023 candidates at the national level, reveals that Youth candidacy records declined from 34% in the 2019 election to 28.6% in the 2023 elections.
The fact sheet pointed out that “youth candidacy for the House of Representatives plunged from 27.4% in 2019 to 21.6% in 2023. Similarly, the State House of Assembly also dropped from 41.8% in 2019 to 35.6% in 2023.
“Of the 15,336 candidates on the ballot in the 2023 elections, 4,398 are youth candidates. 1,899 of these figures are between 25 – 30 years.
“Regarding females and people with disability inclusion in the candidacy, there is a poor representation of young female candidates on the list of candidates; as 11% of youth candidates are female.”
Identifying political parties with good gender representation among their candidates, the factsheet noted that “with respect to the young female candidates, the ADC (62), AA (58), APM (54) have the highest number of young female candidates while the APC (9) and PDP (5) have the lowest number of young female candidates.
The report also noted that “among the young candidates, seven individuals representing 0.2% are persons with disabilities.”
The report explains that 43.2% of youth candidates in the 2023 election are direct beneficiaries of the Not Too Young To Run Act Project of Yiaga Africa.