A non-governmental organisation, Global Peace Development in collaboration with the British Council Monday embarked on the training of 50 youth leaders in Enugu state on need the to discourage election violence and voter apathy.
Speaking during the training tagged: “Youth Leaders’ Connect Training And Inauguration,” held at Ozom Hotel, Enugu, the Director GPD, Ebruke Esike, explained that the training was basically to encourage youth participation in electoral process to distort fake news, hate speech and vote-buying so as to contribute to free, fair and credible elections devoid of violence.
Esike stated that the training was a pilot project to look at how youths irrespective of limited resources were able to organise themselves, mobilise their peers through constructive engagement and education that can reduce electoral unfairness, that can reduce voter apathy and that can promote more youth to actively participate in elections.
Reminding the participants on the need to fully participate in elections, Esike noted that when people abstained from election participation makes room for bad leaders to emerge.
Speaking in an interview on how the participants were chosen, the GPD director said that participants applied on the Google Form.
“Actually, over hundreds people applied and 50 were shortlisted for the training and these 50 persons will in turn come to have a dialogue session with UK youths and Nigeria youths from Enugu, particularly to engage and influence election positively.
“After the training, it is expected that these youths will mobilise their peers at least 50 youths before the next meeting both physical and virtual Nigeria and youths in UK to look at a dialogue platform. We are bringing a political leaders, youth leaders of major parts to the event so as to discuss and have a commitment from them that they on their own will ensure the election is free and they will not use intimidation which is a major factor that lead to voter-apathy.
“So they will mobilise their peers at that level. We are still going to train some 10 youths among them on video and podcast which they will use to study the election and we are using the signal platform.”
In her presentation, a consultant and Executive Director, Parent-Child Intervention Center, Peggy Chukwuemeka charged young people to be fully involved in decision-making process.
Speaking on the topic, “Policy Advocacy and Youth Participation in the electoral process,” Chukwuemeka said youths had over the years relegated themselves to mere onlookers and praise singers.
.
