2023 Election: APC, PDP Rank Low in List of Youth, Female Candidate

• The latest statistics released by Yiaga Africa reveal that the ruling party, APC is not youth and women-friendly
• According to the report, the ruling party was among those with the lowest number of youth and women candidates
• Meanwhile, the main opposition, PDP was also found wanting as they also recorded a low statistic of youth and female candidate

FCT, Abuja - Ahead of the forthcoming 2023 general elections, emerging statistics have shown that the major political parties in Nigeria have ranked low in the list of youth and female candidates vying for political offices.

On Thursday, October 6, Africa's apex election observer group Yiaga Africa unveiled its preliminary report for youth candidacy for the 2023 general elections in Nigeria.

During a roundtable section attended by Legit.ng regional correspondent, alongside the independent national electoral commission (INEC), civil society groups, and other stakeholders, Yiaga Africa reeled out the complete statistics from the final lists of candidates released by INEC some few hours earlier.

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Speaking at the roundtable, the executive director of Yiaga Africa, Samson Itodo, disclosed that the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) and its main opposition, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), ranked low in the list of political parties with youth candidates.

Itodo said there was a general decline in youth candidacy compared to the 2019 statistics, which had numerous youths contesting for political offices.

Legit.ng gathered that this year's statistics declined to 29 per cent compared to the 34 per cent for the 2019 general elections.

The report, however, blamed the outrageous cost of party nomination forms, the commercialised party primaries, and others as the cause of the drastic decline in youth candidacy.

Below is the full list of rankings according to political parties:

Party distribution of youth candidates for House of Representatives

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Statistics for female candidates

According to the report released by Yiaga Africa, stated that 11 per cent out of the 29 per cent of the entire youth candidates constituted the female block.

The report says:

“With respect to the young female candidates, the ADC (62), AA (58), and APM (54) have the highest number of young female candidates. While the APC (9) and PDP (5) has the lowest number of young female candidates."

Source: Legit.ng