Worried over the low turnouts of youth participation in the last presidential elections in 2019, Yiaga Africa has announced plans to get over 600,000 youths registered for the 2023 elections across the six geopolitical zones in the country.
The move according to Yiaga is to maximise the huge population of the Nigerian youth to elect into office the right candidate with the right capacity to govern the affairs of the country.
The executive director, Yiaga Africa, Samson Itodo, at the roundtable on voter mobilisation for Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) and Permanent Voter Card (PVC) collection with Lagos-based civil society organisations (CSOs), stated that to achieve this feat, it would be organising a campaign, the youths vote counts 2.0 concert scheduled to hold in Lagos, pointing out that the plan is to take the campaign to six geo-political zones.
“The plan is to go to six cities and the six geopolitical zones like we did in 2019 where we went round six universities where INEC was registering voters whilst the event was taking place and in 2019, through the youths vote count, INEC registered 25000 students. This time, we are raising it and our goal is to actually get about 100000 young people and the voters register using the youths vote count campaign.
“The entry permit is your PVC or the voter’s registration slip. Registration will be taking place by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and over 30 registration points. So we invite unregistered voters to come there and register next week,” he said.
Earlier, the Desk Officer, CSO, Liaison INEC, Lagos State, Buba Luka, said the collaboration between Yiaga and CSOs is aimed at increasing the number of people that would come out to register and collect their PVCs.