The NGOs Raising Young Active Citizens in Nigeria
Nurturing active young citizens in Nigeria
Introduction
As a country with a youthful population of 70 percent under 30 years, mobilizing young people to become active citizens in Nigeria is a good contribution to nation-building. This is a reaffirmation of the important role young people play in national development.
Owing to this, some Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) set out specific programmes and campaigns to inspire, empower and equip Nigerian youth to become active citizens — these efforts position as an effective means to secure the country’s future development and prepare its next set of leaders for the challenges of national reconciliation and development.
This article highlights some NGOs’ impact on capacity building and community development. The scope of this work is limited to NGOs operating in Nigeria.
https://www.arabianjbmr.com/pdfs/JPDS_VOL_9_5/5.pdf
What is Active Citizenship?
Active citizenship is a contested concept. However, it is frequently used to describe citizens that engage in a broad range of activities that promote and sustain democracy. These actions include activities such as protesting, collecting petitions, volunteering, and conventional political engagement such as voting or campaigning for elections.
Anyone can be an active citizen! This is because it is closely linked to the citizen’s rights and duties to participate actively in the causes that aid the development of the community or the nation. The most critical thing active citizens have in common is carrying out social action projects to improve their communities.
Active citizenship has a considerable impact on society, partly because it is rooted in the moral concepts of the individual and partly because it constitutes an identity about community life.
Relevant Interventions that Support Youth to Become Active Citizens
Active citizenship can be as small as a campaign to clean up your surroundings or as big as sensitizing young people about democratic values, skills, and participation. Active citizenship is one of the most important steps toward healthy societies. As stated earlier, several NGOs have churned out initiatives tailored to fit young people’s needs and contexts. These initiatives are constructed using an interdisciplinary approach with considerations for leadership, ethics, sustainability, as well as gender and diversity within the scope of its framing. Their interventions for youth on civic participation focus on citizens demanding accountability for good governance or innovatively addressing social issues.
Some of these initiatives include the Youth Day of Service from LEAP Africa, Ready to Run by YIAGA Africa, among others.
Youth Day of Service — Youth Day of Service (YDoS) is an annual week-long, pan-African youth-led social impact campaign that begins on August 12 every year, which is also ‘International Youth Day.’ YDoS is designed to ignite the agency and creativity of young people across Africa toward sustainable development and promote a culture of communal support and community development. It is considered “Leadership in action”.
Some projects included but were not limited to donating foodstuff to various communities like the Amukuko community outreach. This was to cushion the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on underserved communities in 2020. This initiative was impactful as it promoted the notion of “being your brother’s keeper” and encouraged other organizations to donate. Riding on this success, YDoS 2021 delivered on its pan-African vision to reach more youth and promote youth activism through meaningful community engagements. With active participation from over 10,000 youths across 22 African countries, it reached over 1 million beneficiaries with over 145 projects. In 2022, these efforts were tripled as youth volunteers covered all 17 sustainable development goals with over 5.7 million beneficiaries. With this, the projects are helping to raise a new generation of young people who are more aware of the issues affecting their communities and motivated to make a positive change.
https://www.fritid-samfund.dk/media/1864/what-is-the-idea-of-active-citizenship.pdf
Ready To Run — is a movement dedicated to inspiring, supporting, and building young people to run for office and, most importantly, win elections. This movement is also focused on equipping candidates with skills and tactics for running effective electoral campaigns. Through the analysis of youth candidacy for the 2023 elections, the initiative has provided credible information for the populace on young people running for office during this election period. Through The ReadyToRun, Yiaga Africa is mobilizing a new breed of visionary public leaders to sanitize electoral politics, obtain political power through the ballot, and provide accountable, responsive, and innovative leadership. This is done by creating access to opportunities, resources, and media publicity that will support the candidate’s campaign.
Additionally, other active NGOs are also working towards this goal, like AIESEC, a global platform for young people to explore and develop their leadership potential, and Youth Alive Foundation (YAF), a Non-Governmental organization based in Uyo, Akwa Ibom state, Nigeria. YAF, through their University programme, Project STUNT (Strengthening Student Networks for Inclusive Development) focuses mainly on developing the advocacy capacity of university students and youth groups to engage with authorities and demand greater accountability and action.
Furthermore, it is imperative to recognize other international organizations, such as the United Nations, who are also working towards developing the advocacy capacity of young people. In 2018, as part of the UN Youth Policy 2030, UNICEF launched the global Generation Unlimited (Gen-U) movement to meet the urgent needs of young people and to expand learning, skill development, employment, and engagement opportunities.
https://leapafrica.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/YDOS-2021-Report-finall.pdf
http://readytorun.ng/dashboard/
Conclusion and Recommendations
Young people should be enabled and supported in learning how to use knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes that will help them sustain active and democratic citizenship behavior throughout their lives. It is by incorporating a democratic citizenship curriculum in the educational system that citizens, pillars of a democratic society, can be raised. This education should be used to foster social change and empower educational actors.
Non-governmental organizations have constantly been at the forefront of advocacy for positive youth transitioning into active citizenship. A sustainable model would be that Governmental parastatals such as the Ministry of Education, revise the Nigerian curriculum to suit the present day context. By inculcating modules that teach self-leadership and community development, more youths will become self-aware and aggressively pursue active change in their communities. If harnessed properly, Nigeria and Africa would be a beacon of democracy.
