The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) says it plans to deploy youth observers alongside traditional election observation missions to monitor Nigeria’s 2027 polls.
Serigne Ka, head of the ECOWAS electoral assistance
division, said the plan is part of the organisation’s efforts to increase youth
participation in electoral and political processes.
Ka spoke in Abuja at the fifth edition of the sectoral
reflection series on elections and democracy organised by the Peering Advocacy
and Advancement Centre in Africa (PAACA) in collaboration with Legis360,
according to a statement issued on Saturday.
The ECOWAS official said the initiative to deploy youth
observation missions had already been successfully piloted in Côte d’Ivoire and
replicated in the Republic of Benin.
He said ECOWAS would implement the same initiative in Cabo
Verde’s November elections and The Gambia’s December polls.
“Definitely, we are not going to leave Nigeria out in
January,” he added.
Ka urged political parties across the region to open up
their structures to greater youth participation, saying young people remain
significantly underrepresented in electoral and political processes despite
constituting the majority of the population.
He said access to finance remained a major challenge,
stressing that young people would find it difficult to participate meaningfully
in politics without the resources needed to engage in the political process.
“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.”
He noted that political parties also have a responsibility
to create opportunities for young people to participate in their internal
structures and processes.
Ka said ECOWAS would continue to promote inclusivity but
added that young people must also take responsibility for pushing for greater
representation in political parties and electoral processes.
Ezenwa Nwagwu, executive director of PAACA, 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 urged young people taking part in election
observation missions to acquire sufficient knowledge of electoral laws and
regulations, warning against treating elections as an activity without a
governing framework.
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