YIAGA PVC Drive Targets 60% of Voting Population

A foremost non-profit Civil Society Organisation,Yiaga Africa, has said it plans to mobilised 60% of the Nigerian Youth population through its project tagged #SixtyPercentOfUs.

YIAGA Africa,whose mandate is the promotion of democratic governance,human rights and civic engagement partnered with sub-grantees that are fellow civil society organisations enlisted in the project including NessAction,Dean Initiative and WeVoteNigeria.

Mr Mark Amaza,Senior Communications Officer YIAGA told THE WHISTLER that the #SixtyPercentOfUs Project is with support from the United Nations Development Programme and it is aimed at ensuring youthful participation in the electioneering process as young people constitute 60% of the entire Nigerian population.

According to population projections by the United Nations for 2020, about 43 percent of the Nigerian population comprised children 0-14 years, 19 percent aged 15-24 years and about 62 percent are below age 25 years. By contrast, less than 5 percent are aged 60 years and above.

“While it is not a new discovery, Amaza continued,the #SixtyPercentOfUs confirmed for us that young Nigerians have a desire to participate politically and determine governance in this country. What has been lacking has been the assurance that their voices matter. The more we engage with them that indeed, it does, the more they have felt confident to participate starting from registering to vote”

Amaza said  the organisation so far had mobilised about 23,000 persons to register and at least 5,000 have successfully registered.

” This is between our three sub-grantees and the winner of #ThePowerOf18 competition in the FCT.

“A lot of the feedback has been around seeking reassurance that their votes will count and the integrity of the election process.He added that for others, it has been around the PVC registration process and the need to make it easier for citizens to register. But overall, there is a lot of enthusiasm,” he said.

According to him,the #SixtyPercentOfUs campaign is aimed at inspiring, motivating & facilitating at least 60% of eligible young people to register and collect for their PVCs and at least 60% of those who register and collect their PVCs to vote in the forthcoming elections.

 He said this is necessary to reverse the declining voter turnout in Nigeria over the past two election cycles and also to increase youth voter turnout.

He said,,“Although young people made up over 51% of the voters register as at 2019, youth voter turnout was only 28%. This is abysmal considering that Nigeria is a youth-majority country and young people are the ones who feel the effects of governance more.

“We want young people to be more involved and deliberate in choosing the leadership that will deliver them the governance they desire.

“This is why through initiatives under the project such as the PVC Bus Drive and #IPledgeToVote by our grantees under the project, we are enabling young people to register for their PVCs.”

 He said the PCV registration and collection project also provided 14 young people in 14 states with N1m grants each to implement innovative ideas that will get at least 5,000 young people in their states to register for their PVCs.

The Executive Director of DEAN INITIATIVE, one of the sub-grantees of for #TheSixtPercentOfUs Project, Mr.Semiye Michael told THE WHISTLER that the project intends to increase youth participation in the electioneering process, especially young people who between the last election and 2023 are yet to attain the voting age. 

“We want to provide enough information for them to get enlisted to partake in their first voting exercise by registering for the PVC and sustaining their interest to collect the PVC and ultimately to vote for the candidate of their choice at the different levels of the election,” he said.

He said statistics have shown that if the voting population of young people could be increased to 60% which will amount to about 29 million  people,there is a possibility that young people become the decider of winners of the elections across board.

“You can imagine the last presidential election,the winner had about 14 million votes,we can have young people having that number of young people deciding who wins the elcetion.It is a good indication of our  democracy as it is young people that should be most bothered,most affected by whatever decisions are reached in governance.They are mostly affected by poor education,unemployment,the health sector as it reduces their health potency for a sustainable standard of living and they are mostly affected by poverty as it drives them into different kind of social vices.What we intend to do is to put the power of democracy in the hands of the young people by ensuring they take up their civic responsibility in voting,” he said.

Micheal said the SixtyPercentOfUs Project drives at least 60% of voters to collect pvcs and vote in the forthcoming elections.

“We want to provide as much information as possible about the cvr that is ongoing:its locations,timing,procedures and processes that are involved to ensure everyone finds it seamless to participate in the process.”

Micheal added that transportation opportunities are provided for economically disadvantaged young people especially whose residences may be far from the locations of INEC offices.

“So we have a bus drive where we would arrange for them,take them to the registration centers and returned to their homes.This is to aid access and to ensure no one that is interested is disenfranchised.We also  have community outreaches where we ensure we provide people with on-the-go information that take place in market places,churches,mosques,schools,motor parks.We want to ensure no one is left behind.”

Micheal decried the level of voter apathy in the country.He said “It bothers us the level of voter apathy in Nigeria,especially when our democracy is left in the hands of a very few people.”

He referred to a report which says Nigeria has the lowest voter turnout across Africa, saying “We have elections that have been held in Nigeria where less than 3% voter turn out was recorded which shows that the winner in that election can have less than 1% of the entire vote population in that constituency and that person is made to represent the entire people.

“This mostly happens because people are angry and they want to use the apathy as a form of protest against bad governance and that has continued to damage the quality of our democracy.What triggered this project is the aim to allow people especially young people see democracy as a co-creation process and whatever the outcome of governance is,the way to correct is not by ignoring voting but most importantly to engage in voting as that is the only legitimate way to correct bad governance.”

Micheal appraised the level of awareness in the electioneering process as awesome.According to him, the outcome has been amazing after a couple of months the project was started.

He said “For the first time,INEC itself is experiencing a huge challenge in meeting up with the pressure.People are now more aware and people are trooping out en masse and there have been a lot of advocacies for an extension of the voter registration by organizations like SERAP.

“We hope this is sustained as we need to change behaviour of people towards voting.

“They usually think their votes don’t count,if this is the case,corrupt politicians wouldn’t be struggling to buy votes.It’s because their votes actually count and for people to continue to think that elections are rigged and we have to make them understand that the process of rigging elections now is very difficult.Everybody now monitors elections as everyone can capture the activities on their smartphone.”

DEAN Initiative is a sub-grantee with YIAGA,under the 60% of us project funded by UNDP.

The project is being implemented in Lagos,in the entire  20 local governments of the state  and in some parts of  Abuja including Gwagwalada and Abaji.

The Operations Director of We Vote Nigeria,  Vanessa Onyemauwa, told THE WHISTLER that  buses are deployed to remote locations in Ondo, Ogun and Abuja (Bwari and Kuje) to convey people to INEC registration centres.

 According to her, Anyone in Ogun, Ondo and Bwari and Kuje Area Councils of the FCT can simply call their numbers to request a pick up.

” We’ll pick you, take you to INEC to register or collect your PVC and bring you back free of charge,” she said. 

Onyemauwa explained that the project was designed in response to low registration and PVC collection rates in certain states of the country. 

“We believe providing free transportation to INEC registration centres can reduce barriers to voting.  The project was conceived to fill a logistics gap for people who need assistance locating or visiting registration centres. Such people can contact us through our communications coordinators in the three locations and then we come to pick them up and take them to the centres closest to them,” she added.

Onyemauwa told THE WHISTLER that Nigeria is a highly political society. According to her,there is now a realization that politics affects everything from security to food prices, healthcare, energy and education. 

She pointed out that collaborations are important where all hands are on deck and resources are collectively deployed. 

“Civil society organisations are working together with our partners YIAGA Africa and the UNDP as well as our other partners, NESSACTION and DEAN Initiative,” she said.

Onyemauwa coordinates the programme team which comprises of over  24 mobilizers across the three states of the federation,