Nigeria’s young voters frustrated by veteran election candidates

Halima Usman is part of a booming new generation in Nigeria, voting for the first time in a presidential election tomorrow after being raised during the country’s two decades of civilian rule.

A majority of eligible voters in Africa’s most populous nation are now 35 or younger, a demographic that will help double the continent’s population by 2050.

Yet the 23-year-old Usman is visibly frustrated. She and other young voters across Africa chafe under leadership that is two, three, even four times their age. President Muhammadu Buhari, 76, has spent months of his term overseas for medical treatment. His top challenger, Atiku Abubakar, is 72. Between them, they have run for president nine times.

“Buhari and Atiku are older than Nigeria itself,” Usman said. The candidates were born more than a decade before Nigeria’s independence in 1960. “These old people, they don’t want to leave these possibilities for us.”

Now a movement is making room for youthful voters like Usman in Nigeria’s roughfistedelectoralprocess,where so-called godfathers in major parties often dictate who runs with maximum payoffs in mind. Meanwhile, Africa’s largest economy limps along on crumbling infrastructure as money is drained away by corruption.

“Old, recycled politicians,” sniffed presidential candidate Kingsley Moghalu, a former bank official who, at 56, is young enough to pitch himself to the rising generation. He has been endorsed by Nobel laureate and playwright Wole Soyinka, who dismisses Buhari and Abubakar as “worthy of absolute rejection.”

At a nationally televised town hall, Moghalu laid out the grim landscape for young Nigerians. Youth unemployment at 54 percent, nearly double the overall rate. Three million people entering the job market each year. A threemonth strike, now suspended, by university academics that he called “a national tragedy.”

This political shift toward wooing Nigeria’s youth began in May when Buhari signed a bill lowering the ages of candidates for president, governorships and lawmakers. Now a 35-year-old can run for president instead of waiting another half-decade. It has opened the doors to several presidential candidates under 40, though a few have withdrawn. More than 70 candidates are chasing the presidency in all.

The bill followed a nearly ten-year push by a movement calling itself Not Too Young to Run, which has inspired a global campaign by the United Nations.

“This is the youngest continent in the world,” executive director Samson Itodo said. “When you look at democracy, it’s about the majority. You cannot continue to exclude your largest bloc in decisionmaking. Young people are angry.”