Election cold comfort for youth
Same old septuagenarian candidates amid soaring joblessness and living costs, violence
TWO men in their seventies are contesting a Nigerian presidential election in which half the registered voters are aged between 18 and 35.
Both are familiar faces. It is the fifth election campaign for President Muhammadu Buhari, 76, who was a military ruler in the 1980s, and the fourth for main opposition candidate Atiku Abubakar, 72, who was vice-president from 1999 to 2007.
It means Saturday’s vote offers little hope of change for young people with nearly a quarter of the work force unemployed – a source of frustration that can spill over into violence.
“The two candidates aren’t what I expected,” said first-time voter Dorcas Nathaniel, a student in the capital, Abuja. Nathaniel said she had hoped at least one of the candidates would have policies she found inspiring, but neither did. At 20, she is in the under35 age group who make up 51% of the 84 million registered voters.
Anyone seeking an alternative – someone who, unlike the main two candidates, is not a well-known, elderly, northern Muslim man from the Fulani ethnic group – has been disappointed. The similarities between the two are largely due to an unofficial power-sharing agreement under which the presidency alternates between the north and south after every two fouryear terms. It is now the turn of the mainly Muslim north.
The rest of the more than 70 presidential candidates lack access to funds available to Buhari and Atiku through parties that have governed Nigeria since military rule ended in 1999. The two men have also developed patronage networks over decades in politics.
John Sunday, 23, a student, in the Makoko shanty town built on stilts in a lagoon in Lagos, said many people were more interested in accepting cash from political parties than choosing their preferred candidate.
“People are after money; they’re not after the future of their children. They are selling their votes,” said Sunday, a political science student.
“Vote buying” is not new but Sunday said for many in the slum – with its littered waterways and stench of excrement – life is getting tougher.
Nearly a quarter of the work force is unemployed. Hardest hit are those aged 15-35, of whom 55% are out of work or not in full-time jobs.
The cost of living has also risen rapidly, with inflation hitting a seven-month high of 11.4% in December.
Cheta Nwanze, head of research at Lagos political consultancy SBM Intelligence, said poverty and higher living costs were a cause of violent crime as unskilled youth tried to make money outside official employment.
Nigeria’s security forces face challenges ranging from Islamist insurgencies, banditry, kidnappings in the oil-rich Niger Delta and communal violence over land use. Nigeria also has a history of violence at election time, sometimes involving thugs paid to intimidate voters but also as a result of anger at alleged vote rigging.
Buhari and Atiku have both sought to address the needs of the jobless in an economy struggling to recover from its first recession in 25 years. The president said the expansion of a vocational skills programme could yield 15 million new jobs.
Atiku wants to expand the role of the private sector to create growth and jobs.