With just about 23 days to the general election, the ruling All progressives Congress (APC) presidential campaign council has launched an app called ‘The Thinking Caps’ to enlighten the youths more about its candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and the governing party.
The initiative, according to the campaign council, is targeted at educating and bridging the knowledge gap among Nigerian youths about Tinubu, his antecedents, the APC government and the opposition.
The app would provide vital information and publish the requisite capacity to think out of the box and provide lasting solutions to diverse socio-economic challenges confronting the nation by the APC presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu and his running mate, Sen. Kashim Shettima.
Addressing a press conference in Abuja on Wednesday in Abua, the director, Strategic Communications, of the APC presidential campaign council, Alhaji Mohammed Idris, said the said the app has a “quiz feature” which is designed to educate the youth by providing the platform to attempt questions and be informed, while having fun.
Idris noted that the app also has other features, including News Feed where end users can read news and articles about the campaign, Gallery icon where audio, infographics, and video content can be viewed and shared on various social media with the capacity to directly engage the 93.4m registered voters.
He said, “The demographic analysis of our population shows that the youth aged 35 and below constitute over 60% of our population. It means Nigeria is a very young country – too young to know that there was a world without computers and GSM phones, not to talk of the internet and social media.
“As far as these youths are concerned, the End-SARS protest was the biggest civil disobedience and fight for citizens’ rights that has ever happened.”
They cannot understand what the older population mean when they talk about military rule and how rights and privileges of citizens were curtailed.
“They have no idea that some people came face to face with gun-wielding soldiers and some paid the supreme price fighting for democracy. They are not familiar with what it means to be pro-democracy activists, and the sacrifices they made that culminated in the democracy we enjoy today.
“So, it suffices to say if 60% of our population did not witness these events and have no knowledge about them, they are not able to make informed choices amongst the front-runners in this race, with particular reference to the candidature of Asiwaju Tinubu.
“This is where the “Thinking Caps” app comes in, to bridge this knowledge gap amongst the Gen Z and millennials and rally the majority of this demography behind the Tinubu-Shettima ticket.
“When we say Tinubu’s Lagos for instance, they wonder what we mean, when they were either unborn or too young to know the hitherto decrepit nature of Oshodi, Mushin, Obalende, Ojuelegba, CMS, amongst others.
“They don’t know what Lekki was or the existential threat that Victoria Island faced because of the ocean surge. They have no idea of the state of the Lagos infrastructure or the general quality of life of Lagosians before Tinubu became Governor, the same way they have no idea about the great achievements of Sen. Kashim Shettima as Governor of an insurgency-ridden Borno State.”
Idris further explained that the campaign council had the responsibility to fill the knowledge gap and educate this critical demographic with facts about their political opponents.
