The youths are the hope of every community or nation and are to be groomed for tomorrow’s leadership. Nigeria’s general election is less than a year and activities are beginning to gear up, as all political parties are outdoing one another, in order to become the favorite party during election. All sort of tricks are used to win elections including violence. The youths are ready tools used by the politicians to cause mayhem during and after elections.
There are three types of electoral violence; pre-election violence, election violence, and post-election violence. These violence are interwoven and are not remarkably different from each other. Some of the electoral violence in Nigeria in which the youths are mainly used are: kidnapping of electoral officers, party agents, shooting, destruction of life and property, thuggery, and stuffing of electoral boxes with ballot papers. This is damaging and not good for the future of our youths.
The youths are lured into these criminal acts by politicians, giving them stipends, buying them hard drugs and taking advantage of some of them due to lack of formal education.
This can be checked if parents monitor their children’s movement in order to know if their children are veering off. Government and parents should make education a priority for the youth.
Government should provide employment opportunities including skills acquisition. When the youth are gainfully engaged, they would never be tempted to get involved in any kind of violence including election violence, as the saying goes, “an idle mind is the devil’s workshop.”
Aisha Kudu Muhammed,
Department of Mass Communication,
IBBU, Lapai, Niger state