Yiaga Africa in a report produced as part of its #RunToWin Project supported by Voice has identified excessive cost of nomination forms, highly commercialized party primaries, substitution of candidates, and the deregistration of political parties, as to some of the factors that have led to the reduction of young candidates in the forthcoming 2023 general elections in Nigeria.
The report which was launched in late 2022 also highlighted that the highly monetized party primaries shrunk on the political space and limited fair competition among the aspirants.
Doing a comparative analysis between 2023 and 2019 candidates, Yiaga noted that “Youth candidacy records decline from 34% in the 2019 election to 28.6% in the 2023 elections. For instance, youth candidacy for House of Representatives plunges 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.”
Buttressing the reason for the decline, the report explained that “most young aspirants declined to pursue their political aspirations due to non-affordability of the forms and lack of resources to procure delegates.
“Some youth candidates were substituted after the party primaries to pacify entrenched political interests in political parties. In addition, deregistration of political parties by INEC directly affected the number of political parties which reduced the number of candidates on the ballot.
“This reinforces the direct relationship between the number of parties and youth candidacy,” the report added.
The report shows that while the decline in youth candidacy is evident, the level of young female candidacy is even worse, noting that the party primaries failed to meet the test of fairness and equity and in cases where parties granted concessions to women, there were not backed by concrete steps to secure the emergence of young female candidates. This reinforces the urgency of political reforms in addition to legal and constitutional provisions to safeguard the participation of women in politics.
The report however recommended that “Political finance reform is an urgent necessity to ensure the political space is accessible to all persons regardless of age, economic class, tribe, and creed. Any meaningful reform of party funding or campaign funding should limit the influx of unregulated money in the political process;
“Enhance the capacity of political parties on resource mobilization and maintenance of proper account of financial transactions and assets register; strengthen INEC’s capacity to monitor and ensure compliance with political finance regulations and;
“Explore new pathways of candidate selection that de-emphasizes the place of money and economic power over competence, capacity and character.”