To provide capable young candidates with support, structure, and innovative voter-attraction strategies to better the odds of winning their runs for office, Run to Win (RtW), a political action organization, says it is working to recruit, train, and manage young, credible, diverse political candidates as they work to get into elected offices across the country.
This is even as the organization asked Nigerians to recommend members of their communities that they believe are best poised to represent their interests in electoral office.
According to a statement from RtW, it will equip campaigns with the tools and knowledge to build an effective election campaign, educating them on strategy, communication, and execution while adding that its core team has worked in multiple African presidential and local elections and believes the political representation of young men and women is crucial to creating a government that can move Nigeria forward.
The organisation’s Political Director, Remi Ogunkayo, said that improving representation is core to RtW’s mission and minority represented demographics such as women are strongly encouraged to apply for the programme.
Ogunkayo said, “Inclusion begins with stepping up. Also young Nigerians who want to hold elected office need to run for office and doing so can be daunting for brand new candidates with limited resources. Building a team, mapping a plan, and executing without support means that candidates cannot always demonstrate their full potential and RtW hopes to change that.”
With one of the largest youth populations on the continent, Nigeria has some of the lowest government youth participation. Electing candidates more reflective of their demographics who understand their challenges and values, speak their language is crucial to overcoming voters’ apathy.
The statement further said RtW will focus exclusively on candidates vying for legislative positions at the sub-national (State House of Assemblies) and federal levels (House of Representatives and Senate) of governance and added that it will recruit candidates who will work to enact a national legislative agenda to solve its persistent problems.
“RtW’s key objectives are to provide capable young candidates with support, structure, and innovative voter-attraction strategies to better the odds of winning their runs for office. To that end, it has begun the process of seeking nominations nation-wide of young individuals who have either garnered some degree of name recognition within the communities they seek to represent; proven grassroots credentials demonstrated by activist initiatives they have either launched or had significant participation in, or the ability to harness the resources needed to run and sustain a campaign.
The candidate must be under 40 at the time of application, and minority candidates are strongly encouraged to apply”, the organization said.