The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has said it will deploy youth-only election observers for Nigeria’s 2027 general election as part of efforts to deepen young people’s participation in electoral processes across the region.
Head of the ECOWAS Electoral Assistance Division, Serigne Mamadou Ka, disclosed this on Saturday while speaking at an interactive session on Youth Democracy organised by the Peering Advocacy and Advancement Center in Africa (PAACA) and Legis360 in Abuja, on the growing efforts by the regional bloc to mainstream young people into election observation and democratic processes.
Ka said ECOWAS had already piloted the youth election observer initiative in Côte d’Ivoire and subsequently repeated it in Benin, with the experience described as successful.
He said the bloc was planning to extend the initiative to subsequent elections, including those in Cabo Verde and The Gambia, stressing that Nigeria would also be included.
‘Definitely, we are not going to leave Nigeria out in January,’ Ka said.
According to him, the initiative was part of ECOWAS’ broader effort to promote youth representation in electoral processes, particularly against the backdrop of the low level of political participation among young people across West Africa.
Ka identified lack of access to finance as the biggest obstacle confronting young people seeking to participate in politics, alongside inadequate education and training, social and cultural barriers, gender bias and weaknesses in internal democracy within political parties.
‘There are many barriers. There are social and cultural barriers, and we have gender bias against women and girls, for instance. But I think the nerve of everything is finance,’ he said.
‘Unless young people can access finance, I don’t think they can do much about political participation.’
The ECOWAS electoral assistance chief also blamed political parties for restricting opportunities for young people to participate in politics, arguing that exclusion at the party level inevitably affects participation at the national level.
‘There are also legal barriers, especially where political parties do not promote internal democracy. That is part of the problem,’ he said.
Ka said access to finance should be complemented with education and training, noting that empowering young people with the necessary resources and knowledge would enable them to confront some of the barriers themselves.
‘But to me, finance comes first, alongside education and training. If we can help young people get more access to finance, education and training, they can even solve some of these problems themselves,’ he said.
He added that technological advancement was gradually helping to weaken some cultural barriers by exposing young people to political developments and experiences in other parts of the world.
‘Cultural barriers, I think, are beginning to disappear because of technology. Technology is helping more people understand what is happening in other places and learn from those experiences,’ Ka said.
On the level of youth participation in elections across West Africa, the ECOWAS official described it as low despite the fact that young people constitute the majority of the population in many countries in the region.
‘Participation is low in every country you take in West Africa,’ he said.
‘Young people form the majority of the population. In some countries, they constitute 70 per cent; in some countries, 60 per cent; and in some countries, 50 per cent or more. But their participation is always low.’
Ka said the problem begins with political parties, which, according to him, often fail to create sufficient opportunities for young people to participate in their structures.
‘As I said, it starts from the political parties themselves. They don’t allow young people to participate. And if they cannot participate within the political parties, how do you expect them to participate at the national level?’ he asked.
He said ECOWAS was therefore promoting greater inclusivity from the party level to the national level, but added that young people themselves must take greater responsibility for advancing their participation.
‘We can promote it, yes, but the hope is now on young people to take it further,’ he said.
Ka urged young people to become more organised and committed to political participation, saying ECOWAS could provide support but could not take up the responsibility on their behalf.
‘We can push, but we want young people also to be more organised and committed,’ he said.
‘If you don’t help yourselves, nobody will help you.’
The development comes against the backdrop of renewed regional efforts to create a permanent role for young people in election observation and democratic governance. Young people from across West Africa recently endorsed the establishment of the West Africa Youth Observers Network (WAYON), following the Youth Democracy Conference in Dakar, Senegal. The network is intended to support capacity building, election observation, data collection and information sharing among young observers.
Also speaking on the initiative, Executive Director of PAACA, Chief Ezenwa Nwagwu, said mainstreaming young people into ECOWAS election observation was important in strengthening democratic participation and countering the attraction of authoritarian rule among some young people.
Nwagwu said the Sectoral Reflection Series, at which the discussions took place, was also intended to build on the outcomes of the Youth Democracy Conference in Dakar and examine ways of taking the recommendations forward.
He said the initiative would help integrate young people into an election observation system where they had historically not been sufficiently represented.
‘It is also about how to mainstream young people into the election observation network of ECOWAS,’ Nwagwu said.
‘This has been going on in ECOWAS for as long as possible, but young people have not actually been mainstreamed.’
He said greater youth participation was necessary because democracy provided citizens with the opportunity to influence decisions affecting their lives, unlike military rule, where citizens have limited avenues to reject government decisions.
Nwagwu urged young people taking part in election observation to acquire sufficient knowledge of electoral laws and regulations, warning against treating elections as an activity in which anyone could participate without understanding the governing framework.
‘The first thing is knowledge. If you invest in knowledge, then you can observe the electoral process according to the regulations and the laws that guide it,’ he said.
‘Election is a law-guided activity.’
He further urged young observers to familiarise themselves with ECOWAS protocols on youth participation, saying knowledge of the regional instruments could help them build stronger communities and promote inclusion.
On concerns over declining youth participation in elections, Nwagwu disputed the impression that young people were withdrawing from political engagement, arguing that social media activity did not provide a complete picture of youth participation.
‘Well, the feeling across Africa is that when you say youth backsliding, it is more of a social media construct,’ he said.
Nwagwu argued that while conversations among urban youths on social media could create an impression of widespread apathy, many young people outside major cities continued to participate in politics, political parties and community mobilisation.
‘When you step away from the cities and go into the communities, you see young people engaging,’ he said.
‘So many times, the hijacking of conversations by urban youth gives the impression that there is a backsliding, but there is no backsliding.’
He said young people who were not active on social media should not be excluded from assessments of youth political participation.
‘Young people are participating, and they are showing it. Young people are not only those on social media. There are many more young people who are not on social media who are participating, who are involved in politics, political parties and mobilisation,’ Nwagwu said.