Akinbo Adetokunbo
Nigeria.
Disenfranchisement has been a tool used by Africa's political class to maintain their stranglehold on power, a multipronged approach that has been perfected by different African leaders over the years to maintain their access to power and the commonwealth of their people. They deploy various resources at their disposal to perpetuate themselves in power and government-funded agencies are not spared but are conscripted into meeting their objective whose primary goal is to keep as many young people away from participating in the political process as possible and being able to manipulate the outcome of elections.
Away from the well-known patterns of disenfranchisement that take place on election day which include but are not limited to; violence, ballot box snatching, voter intimidation, and harassment, there's been a subtler yet far more damage done by the body constitutionally empowered to conduct and manage elections as seen in the Nigeria 2023 general elections and this case INEC.
Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Nigeria's electoral body systematically disenfranchised a lot of youth from the 2023 general elections by ending the registration of eligible voters before the lawfully stipulated time in a clear violation of the country's electoral laws. In the build-up to the 2023 general elections, INEC halted the Continuous voter registration (CVR) exercise on the 31st of July 2022 which was approximately 90 days before the constitutionally due date.
A lot of young working-class voters in urban centers like Lagos waited long hours at understaffed registration centers, left in frustration due to their work schedule complained that they couldn't register within the allocated time frame, and equally advocated for an extension of the voter's registration which never happened. Numerous advocacy calls and appeals from civil society organizations and stakeholders to INEC on the need to allow wider participation in the general elections by continuing the registration were largely left unanswered.
It deprived a large percentage of both young working class living in urban centers and potential first-time voters that would have clocked eighteen years old and become eligible voters during that window from August 2022 to October 2022 the opportunity of participating in the election as they were not registered to vote. This policy not only dampened the enthusiasm and hope of demography of eligible voters but also served the purpose of the political class by keeping young people from participating in the political decision-making process and alienating them from having a say in their future and who leads them.
Youth participation in the political process has been deliberately limited by a host of factors that include policies of government agencies and others to be discussed in the future
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