On election day, Maryam Adetona arrived at her polling station in Ilorin, north-central Nigeria, around 10 a.m., while officials were still setting up. Across town, Akinwale Philip arrived at his polling booth at 9am. In Owerri, in the southeast of the country, Chisom Nnachi arrived at his polling station around 8 a.m. and had to wait four hours before officials arrived. In Abeokuta, in the southwest, Adebayo Ayomide was detained and did not return to his unit until around 11 a.m. All four are in their twenties and were voting for the first time in the country’s presidential and senatorial elections, which were held on February 25, 2023.
Nigeria’s young population is incredibly politically active, at least online. But the country’s political establishment often dismissed them as “four people tweeting from a room”, believing that online activism would not translate into concrete action. Historically, they might have been right. Even though two-thirds of Nigeria’s population is under the age of 30, youth participation in Nigerian elections is generally low. In the country’s last election in 2019, only 34% of registered and eligible voters cast ballots. In February’s elections, the two main parties – the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC), which have dominated Nigerian politics for decades – barely bothered to target young voters on the online spaces where they congregate.
But this year, a wave of online organizing and youth participation brought a foreign candidate, Peter Obi, close to establishment parties, upending the country’s politics.
“The Internet has allowed like-minded young people to connect and organize organically. It was the first time we saw spontaneous organic rallies being held across the country, with little or no partisan forces to organize them,” says Joachim MacEbong, senior analyst at Stears Inc, an intelligence and analytics firm. based in Lagos. “Opposition [parties] They missed these early signs and dismissed them as “four people tweeting in a room.” And now, months later, we can see that it was much more than that.
The roots of the online wave were planted in 2020, when an online protest movement against police brutality – known as EndSARS – led to street demonstrations that were sometimes violently repressed. Although the immediate political impact of these protests was limited, they led to the creation of informal defense networks that survived into the election period. As Abdussalam Abdulqoyum, a new voter, says, the movement has “shamed the apathy” of young Nigerians into going to the polls.
Ayomide, who voted for the first time in Abeokuta, witnessed the EndSARS protests first-hand and says that was when he started feeling engaged in politics. “It became a life or death situation for me,” Ayomide said.
