As the 2023 elections draw nearer, ActionAid Nigeria has called for more youth engagement to tackle electoral violence.

ActionAid’s Resilience Programme Coordinator, Anicetus Atakpu, who made this known, spoke on the sidelines of ‘Stakeholders’ Engagement on Conflict Prevention of Election-Related Violence’ in Kaduna State, northwest Nigeria.

He noted that once the youths are properly engaged and sensitised, electoral violence would be reduced.

He said the youths are not properly carried along even though they are the strongest political stakeholders, adding that the youths have always been the unfortunate ones, as they are always used for the wrong reasons.

’95 of the violence that happens in Nigeria are probably being carried out by the youth, so in all the elections, 90 to 95 percent of election violence is presumed to have youths as foot soldiers’, he said.

Atakpu noted that in order to reduce election violence, there is an urgent need to engage more youths who form the largest demography in Nigeria’s population.

He further called for the sensitisation of Nigerian youths to their civic obligations and the importance of the election to good governance to steer them away from electoral violence.

‘Over 46 percent of the total population of Nigeria are youths between the ages of 18 and 35. They, too, also have the highest percentage of perpetrators of election violence’, he stressed.

‘Once the youths are properly engaged and sensitised, then to a large extent, electoral violence and the damages it causes would be reduced’.

According to data from Worldometer, Nigeria has the largest population of young people in the world, with a median age of 18.1 years.

About 70 percent of the population (which stands at a huge 151 million youths) are under 30, and 42 percent of the 70 percent are under the age of 15.

Photo source: The Commonwealth