Young people should be encouraged to run for political office
Mr. Kingsley Bangwel is the Executive Director of Youngstars Development Initiative (YDI). In this interview, he says there is need to encourage young people to occupy decision-making positions so as to save the future. Excerpts:
Young people are often neglected as political aspirants perhaps because they lack experience or enough funds to spend on campaigns. What are you doing to improve their political education?
We have a programme called Young Aspirants Leadership Fellowship (YALF) which is designed to increase the capacity, participation and space for youth emergence in elective positions in the 2019 Nigerian general elections. Since the return to democracy, there has been clamour among young people for greater inclusion in the political arena, not necessarily in the aspect of mobilising support for others, but to contest and win elections.
But young people don’t automatically have the capacity to run for political office and that is why YALF was established and it will provide political education to young aspirants to improve their chances of winning elections and improve their future. The presence of young people in political offices and taking part in decision making will benefit the society.
What is the yardstick needed by youths to run for political office?
You have to make a decision to run for political office as a young person and justify why you want to run for that office. For instance, is there anything you are unhappy about and you want to change? And then an aspirant needs a campaign team and the most strategic platform is a political party. The party must offer the kind of manifesto that resonates with the ideology of the aspirant. An aspirant must maintain consultation with stakeholders, especially from his immediate constituency, including traditional, religious, and women leaders, as well as various age groups. There is need to also know constitutional provisions and party guidelines.
Political parties certainly play a role in political education. Do you intend to work with them?
We are non-partisan and will work with the parties in training young people under YALF; especially in the North Central. We will host three tailored YALF workshops for 350 genuine youth aspirants and candidates interested in running for different elective positions in the 2019 Nigeria general elections using a structured training curriculum. We will work with people between the ages of 18 and 35, but for people with disability; we will extend the age limit to between 18 and 40. And we are going to use facilitators from different backgrounds; including those that ran for political office, those that are holding political office and people that are well-informed. Again, we will be hosting an interparty youth forum, converging political parties on how to increase space and ease for youth candidates to emerge in political parties as flag bearers. We shall establish and coordinate a non-partisan Youth Aspirants Information and Advisory Hub and toll-free service that shall provide structured information and counselling for young people regarding aspects of running in elections. We will be producing and broadcasting ‘2019 Weekly’ on the social media where current issues on electioneering are discussed from youth and young aspirants perspective, as well as undertake a study on youth participation in the 2019 general elections.
Do you envisage a situation in which the polity is dominated by the youths?
The political space cannot be dominated by the youths because for any society to be fully functional, you need all the people to be part of the development process. We are talking about increasing participation of the youths in politics. We will identify the young contestants that will take part in the fellowship and we will also increase the awareness of those who may lose elections; for them to be relevant.