What was the impact of Yiaga Africa in the 2023 general elections?

We mobilised the people to register and collect their Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs), and we organised concerts in Abuja and Lagos and it contributed a lot to the registration as about 28,00O youths got registered during the concerts. We mobilised 286 volunteers in seven states to mobilise people for PVCs collection.

We also mobilised young people to participate in elections as voters and as candidates. We embarked on youths votes count campaigns. Youths votes count was conducted in six universities across the country. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) provided the personnel and technical support for the process. A lot of young people received support from Yiaga Africa during the elections.

We had a lot of people registered in the offices. 92 young people between 25 and 35 years of age were elected into the states’ houses of assembly, which was an increase compared to 2019. The only thing we could not help was election manipulation. We actually developed tools to fight against election manipulations. We noticed that there were manipulations in many places such as what happened in Adamawa State.

We discovered that everything predicted by election manipulation risk index came to pass in the elections. Technology didn’t fail, but humans failed. Talking about BVAs, for instance, it was a huge success, it delivered on accreditation the first time it was deployed.

What are some of the lessons that we learned in the 2023 general elections?

One of the lessons is that the electoral reforms can deliver credible elections if politicians comply with the rules. However, we were expecting too much before the elections and I would say that there were ambiguities and complexities in the results of the elections.

There were new alliances, new actors were produced, and there were dramatic changes in the politician scene. Also, there was broken trust, there was crisis of confidence, and there is need for an independent review of the election. The review of the election must start now as preparation for the 2027 general elections has begun.

Are you convinced that youths are ready for leadership positions in Nigeria?

Yes, it is obvious, you can that we have a lot of young people in states’ houses of assembly and about 22 young people in the Federal House of Representatives. I would say they are very ready. The society needs to accept youths into leadership positions.

Your organisation has been doing a lot, where do you get the funding from?

All our election programmes are supported by our development partners, we do our programmes through grants and one of them is the European Union, which is our major supporter.

Considering the situation of things, what do you think is the best for young people to do as some of them are in government now?

The best thing for them to do is to provide the kind of leadership that their communities need because those who voted them into the offices saw something in them, so they should not fail their people. Those, who are in the legislature need to sponsor legislations that advance the development of their peo- ple and that can also solve the challenges that they face.

The other thing is that they should defend the interest of their people. So, in the legislature, they must ensure that they hold the executive to account in a way that it protects the interest of their constituents because their constituents and their peo- ple are in dire need of leadership. So, they should not be rubber stamp to what their governors bring to them. Thirdly, how they perform would determine whether other young peo- ple would be elected into offices in the future.

What would be your reaction to some of the moves of the new government, especially on the removal of fuel subsidy?

I strongly support the removal of fuel subsidy because it’s an economic reality that we must accept. But the big issue is how the policy was introduced and how it is implemented. Also, there is lack of clarity on how the government would cushion the effect of this.

I’m sure that before the government introduced the policy, they must have taken time to outline the issues. This is what Nigerians are asking for, a concrete plan and in addition to that, they should see that the economic strategy of the administration serves the interest of the people and not the one that continues to impoverish the people.

What do you think is wrong with the our electoral system that we need to adjust before the next election?

The first thing is that the INEC needs to be reformed, the appointments of INEC Commissioners need to be revisited, the president should not appoint INEC commissioners because it makes them subject to political authorities, and it makes them vulnerable as we could see in the last election. The second is that the voters register needs to be audited, so that we will know those who have registered.

The third critical thing that needs to be done to our reform process is the need for improved technology. Technology is the tool that can deepen the integrity of the process and that can also undermine the process. So, how we incrementally improve our laws to protect the use of our technology in our electoral process matters.

We have off-season elections in Kogi, Imo and Bayelsa, what would be the roles of Yiaga Africa in all of these to ensure that youths participate more in them?

We are having a very tough election in November this year and these three elections are very tough because the history of elections in these states shows that violence is the tool used for politics and electioneering endorse- ment there. The states are manned by people, who actually assumed offices under controversial circumstances.

I would say that for those states all those that were declared winners were those whose processes of emergence were questionable. So, for us at Yiaga Africa, we are going to be keenly observing the elections to protect the process that only the will of the people should prevail. Two, it’s a litmus test for the INEC and others whether lessons from the general elections are going to be applied in the election.

The other one is that the pre-election violence that we see in places such as Kogi are troubling and disturbing and we will see how this administration of Bola Tinubu, being a statesman, would handle it. He should be interested in free, fair, credible and peaceful elections in those three states.

How he manages and how the INEC manages them would be critical to his own legacies. Could you tell us more about Yiaga Africa?

Yiaga Africa delivers electoral assistance to election management bodies to improve their capacity to manage electoral operations, voter education, communications, and stakeholder engagement. We support election management bodies and electoral institutes through capacity development programmes and electoral policy design.

We promote active and sustained citizens’ participation in the electoral process through campaigns, workshops, web-based tools, and traditional media. In addition, we run periodic civic camps for first-time voters in addition to democracy clubs established in high schools to mobilise young people for civic leadership.