Nigeria gears up for an “election of young people.”
As the continent’s most populous country is gearing up for its next presidential election.
The citizens of Nigeria are unhappy with the politicians of their country, these include worsening insecurity and economic hardship.
These are to play a major role or will be the factors that are to determine whom the 93.5 million votes select as the successor of President Buhari.
At least 40% of the registered voters are youths.
At least 18 Nigerians are running for the Presidential office, however according to the opinion polls at least three of them have a realistic chance to replace ,the incumbent, President Mohammed Buhari.
Bola Tinubu is the governing party’s candidate, All Progressives Congress (APC) party. He is campaign under the banner, “it’s my turn to be president”.
However, he has been accused of being involved in corruption. The opposition candidate is Bola Tinubu (76),a member of PDP. He has run for the presidency at least 5 times before and lost.
He is a former, Vice President and prominent businessman who has been accused of corruption and cronyism, something which he denies. The third hopeful candidate is Peter Obi, who is viewed by many as a catalyst.
As he is trying to break up the two party system that has dominated Nigeria since the end of military rule in 1999 and is running under the ticket of a new party ,’Labour party’.
He is a former party member of PDP and served as a governor in 2006-14. Besides security and unemployment according to its National Bureau 33% of Nigerians are unemployed the 42.5% of the population being the youths.
Electricity and lack of water has been have been the center campaign of other candidates. Chief Mahmoud Yakuba described this coming up elections as “Election of young people”.
If no Candidate manages to win the first round, where by the candidate has to obtaining the highest number of votes national wide and more than a quarter of ballots cast in at least two thirds of Nigeria’s state.
A runoff between the two candidates will be announced in 21 days.
During this year’s election Nigerians will be using Bilmodal Accreditation System (BVAS) a device aimed at stopping election fraud.
They have been used before in 2021 and 2022 state wide elections.
In this February elections they will choose members of National Assembly, two weeks later they choose governors for 28 states out of 36 states.
