By Lucky Okoedion
Sequel to our previous episode of ‘Visions From The #Endsars Protests’, here is an opinion about one of the major fall outs from the protests, which is the determination of a large fraction of the youth population to ‘fight back’ by forming a new political party that is exclusively for youths, with the aim of taking over the leadership of the country by winning the 2023 presidential election. Read the previous episode here.
IT IS NAIVE
A fundamental error, a tragic one for that matter, that is associated with the idea of a youth political party is the fact that it is not the wisest to restrict a party’s scope to a certain age bracket. Nigeria is not only made up of youths, there are elders too. And what becomes of the party when the youths of today who will build the party later become old? We should rather focus on lobbying, negotiating, and raising funds to buy over or win over the current two main existing political parties – APC and PDP, with the aim of making them pro-youth.
2023 IS ALREADY TOO LATE FOR THIS
The following huddles that we must cross in order to win 2023 elections cannot be surmounted in the next 2 years –
1) The protesters have not accepted any individual or group as the leader(s) of the movement. How long will it take for that to be achieved? No matter how fast, it will not take less than 3 months.
2) It will take time to arrive at a consensus for the name of the new political party
3) How long will it take to draft the constitution of the party ?
4) How long will it take to achieve nation-wide support and acceptance for the party? Recall that more votes come from the North and most northern voters are politically illiterate peasant farmers, herdsmen, house wives , children and almajiris. (Please don’t be offended. It is the sad reality. It was through their bulk votes that Buhari won first and second time.). We need to get them to start thinking like the rest of us before we can win 2023 elections.
5) How long will it take to raise funds for the party and to set up national leadership and offices in the 36 states?
6) How long will it take to come up with strategy to buy over the other category of youths who are the “thugs” that are in the employ of the old political parties. Recall that the kind of politics these set of youths are used to is the dirty politics. If we use them, our new party will not be different from the old. If we don’t use them, they will be used by the old political parties to hijack and ruin our initiative the same way they were allegedly used to hijack the #Endsars protests.
INSTEAD, LET’S WIN OVER THE ALREADY EXISTING BIG PARTIES THROUGH THIS PROCESS
Step 1: Form alliance with current governors who are pro youth.
Step 2: Through the pro youth governors who are also the leaders of the political parties in their states, get educated youths into political party positions like Ward Chairman, etc
Step 3: Get youths into political party delegates lists so that it will be easy for youths to win primaries.
Step 4: As a compliment to step 3, start agitating for political parties to amend their constitutions to make them pro-youth.
Step 5: Set up a well funded team to start lobbying the top leadership of the two main political parties for them to accept that their next party flag bearer won’t be older than a certain age.
Lucky Okoedion is a believer of a new Nigeria where true democracy and effective governance is practiced. He writes from Benin City. And can be reached on +2347038820118 .
