The Nigeria Youth Futures Fund (NYFF) has launched a ‘National Visioning Project’ agenda in Abuja ahead of the 2023 general elections. The project’s goal is to encourage and strengthen youth leadership in Nigeria.
The group also stated that it would mobilize youths, who account for more than 70% of Nigeria’s population, across the country’s six geopolitical zones to vote for leaders based on competence and capacity.
Opeyemi Oriniowo, Project Lead of NYFF, explained in Abuja that the NYFF National Visioning Project was a collaborative initiative of LEAP Africa, MacArthur Foundation, and Ford Foundation to strengthen young people for youth leadership, activism, and social change.
“Through this initiative, we seek to empower over 70% of Nigeria’s population, who comprise the youth population,” he said. We do not intend to vote on the basis of ethnicity or gender in the 2023 election.
And, for the first time, we are attempting to create an agenda representing the interests of the country’s young people.
“What we are attempting to do for the first time is obtain a document that will represent the collective aspirations of young people across the country, and in order to accomplish this, we decided to take this exercise to each of the states, so we have converged across the entire country where we met with young people in each region, covering the entire six Geo-Political Zones of Nigeria.”
“We are not inheriting a country where you currently see in terms of governance solely being dictated on ethnic lines or religious lines, we see young people talk about the issues that really matter to them, issues of unemployment, issues of insecurity, and issues of social cohesion.”
Adding: “We are going to interact with the candidates of the 2023 elections. It is a collective aspiration of youths to see how well each of these candidates are able to mainstream our voice, this agenda that we develop as the voices of young people.”
Amabelle Nwakanma, Director of Programmes at LEAP Africa, also spoke, emphasizing the importance of mainstreaming the voices of young people in Nigeria and across Africa.
She went on to say that youth participation in national development is critical.
Chima Christian, a South-East delegate at the National visioning exercise, also emphasized the importance of the exercise in contributing to a new Nigeria that upholds the principles of fairness, equity, and justice for all geopolitical regions.
Halimah Tauheed, a delegate from the North-Central region and lecturer at the Federal University of Technology, Minna, thanked the retreat’s organizers.
She advocated for a comprehensive capture of youth voices in the geopolitical region, saying, “It has become clear in recent years that Nigerian youths are not lazy.” We have developed a strong interest in governance, politics, and nation-building.”
