Durotoye / Sowore’s Possible Path to Aso Rock
There is still a lot of discussion going on regarding the comments about Nigerians youths made by President Buhari at the Commonwealth Business Forum in London on the 18th of April, 2018. There has been widespread condemnation of the remarks both in local and international media, plus an outcry from the Nigerian youths who took to social media to vent their frustration to what they took as a slight to their endearing enterprise.
The uproar will not doubt have pleased two men, Fela Durotoye and Omoyele Sowore, both of whom have expressed their 2019 presidential aspirations and are also counting on Nigerian youths to back their campaigns to sweep them into office. Fela Durotoye is unarguably among Nigeria’s leading motivational speakers with a clientele base ranging from tier one banks to some of the country’s leading oil companies. While Omoyele Sowore is the enigmatic publisher of Sahara Reporters who has brandished his antecedents as past student union leader, pro-democracy and anti-corruption crusader as part of his campaign message.
Neither man has run for political office before, as compared to President Buhari who will be going for his fifth run at the polls. This has left many commenters scratching their heads as to whether both men have not bitten off more than they can chew and if having a youth embracing strategy will work. As politics is indeed a game of number, at Kingmakers we decided to have a look to examine if there was any scenario where either Durotoye or Sowore could cause an upset at the polls.
We started off by examining the youth population in each of the states. We examined census data from previous exercises to the last held in 2010, and use that to project what the likely population size would be for the 15 to 29 year old demographic (category used by National Population Commission) and used that to project the likely population count in 2015 and 2019. Between 2015 and 2019, the size of that demographic grew at annualised rate of 2.2%, adding a potential 5.4 million voters to the pool.
Next we looked at the INEC data to see the percentage of youths (30 years and below) who have been accredited to vote in the 2015 Presidential Elections. While there was no breakdown of data on state level and national figures showed that 39% of the 23.6 million accredited to vote by INEC officials were between the ages of 18 to 30 years old. Now this is in line with the general population, where 15–29 years are 38% of the total adult population.
We then use the national average to get an idea of the total number of accredited voters in each of the state. Using that figure, and subtracting that from the total number of youths in each state, we were able to get a rough idea of the number of unaccredited youth voters in each state come the time of the elections in 2019. The results of which can be seen in the table below.
Now, what this mean for both candidates? For one, they have a huge pool of voters that they will be hoping will be able to identify with them that might not ever voted before, and this is will present an opportunity for them to put in someone they can relate to into power.
If one looks at the top ten states in terms of the number of unregistered and unaccredited voters, the only state President Buhari has consistently won since in start going to the polls is Katsina State. However he did win in 7 of those states in the 2015 elections but with the exception of Katsina and Kebbi states, elections in the remaining 5 states — Lagos, Benue, Kaduna, Oyo and Plateau tend to very keenly contested and close to call. These are states Durotoye and Sowore can put some of their campaigning efforts to. As regards Akwa Ibom, Rivers and Delta states, President Buhari has consistently lost by a big margin in these states.
Come 2019, there will over 45 million youths who have been yet to get accredited to vote, if they can convince just 10% of those youths (4.5 million voters) to get accredited vote for them, and pray that the President Buhari is unable to increase his base and either one of them gets the Jonathan voters from the last election, President Buhari will most likely lose the election, but only just.
However, this scenario will still need certain conditions to be satisfied before this can happen, mainly:
1. Durotoye and Sowore will need to work together, and not only that, one will have to step down for the other. If egos are put aside, they could form a formidable team to at the very least blunt the APC’s hold on the South West Zone. If they don’t they will split the youth vote, and will definitely be less effective individually in attracting them to their campaigns.
2. They both currently lack the political structure and national reach of either the APC or the PDP, the two political parties in the country. No doubt, APC will fall behind President Buhari and it is extremely unlikely that the PDP will have over its party to either of the two gentlemen that have been yet to be tested in battle. This effectively means they will have to build their own structure from scratch or take over one of the smaller parties. Durotoye has pitched his tent the Alliance for New Nigeria and Sowore has yet to select any platform. It is possible to build a political party with national reach but it might involve compromises and backroom deals. Plus they will need to reach out to prominent backers from other regions of the country. It can be done but time is not on their side and these things do take time. President Buhari had to compete in 4 national elections to get build the political structure that toppled the once unstoppable PDP.
3. They will need to inspire the youths and give them something to aspire to if they want the youths to go and not only get accredited but also show up at the polling booth on election day.
It remains to be seen if either of them can put it off. Campaigning to become President of Nigeria is never an easy task, let alone ousting an incumbent but both men seem determined to give it a go and the best of luck to them.
