Young candidates participating in the 2023 elections are set to get relief as Yiaga Africa and the Nigerian Bar Association Young Lawyers Forum (NBA-YLF) have promised to provide them with free legal services.
Yiaga Africa’s Executive Director, Samson Itodo, made this known at the Election Law Clinic for 30 young lawyers in Lagos State, southwest Nigeria.
According to him, the Election Law Clinic, which is part of the ‘Turn Up Democracy’ project of the organisation, is funded by the United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).
Itodo said that the service would also be extended to other young candidates with disabilities who requested the free legal service.
The aim of the partnership, according to Itodo, was to provide free legal services to young candidates who could not afford to get lawyers that could handle their election petitions.
He said the organisation discovered that a lot of young candidates who wanted to run in the election had very limited access to legal support to defend and pursue their political aspirations.
‘We discovered a lot of them do not have the financial capabilities to secure legal services and we also saw cases where young candidates were substituted by their parties, because they couldn’t defend their rights’, he said.
‘This is because securing electoral justice was quite challenging so we thought that as part of our efforts to increase young candidacy and to increase political inclusion, it was necessary to mobilise young lawyers who can support candidates with pro bono legal services, providing them guidance on provisions of the electoral legal framework in this case’.
Itodo said the exercise was not only to build their capacities on the Electoral Act, but also to mobilise them to support the young candidates who are running in the next election, as a way of advancing youth participation.
For his part, former Chairman, YLF, Ikeja, Nurudeen Yusuf, noted that 30 young and new lawyers were trained in Lagos and Sokoto states simultaneously on election litigation and laws relating to the new Electoral Act.
Yusuf said the electoral litigation was cost-intensive and young candidates did not have access to such funds to mobilise lawyers.
Photo source: Yiaga Africa