How Nigeria’s Youth Brought Down the Old Guard
A Memory from 2025
I remember 2023. Seems just like yesterday now that the Youth Party swept across the country and unseated both the PDP and the APC, winning the elections across board with margins that made it clear to the world and beyond that we were done with 60 years of rubbish.
The first election happened on social media. It was a virtual election on Twitter that started with calling out for nominations from every young person qualified to serve across all the elective posts in Nigeria. Willing and qualified people came forward, and there were rigorous debates for many weeks as the world had watched. Even outsiders had never seen social media play a pivotal role in determining the future of a country like it was doing for Nigeria — everyone was interested. For months #changeishere trended globally.
On the day of the virtual election, young Nigerians all over the world polled over 60 million votes and selected candidates. There were more women candidates in the YP than there had been elected women representatives since Nigeria’s independence. Next, they formally registered the Youth Party and registered all the successful candidates as the party choice. For the first time in Nigeria’s history, there was a party that wasn’t defined along ethnic or religious lines. The YP campaign organizers crowdfunded over 1 billion naira in funds. They rejected all funds from sympathetic corporate bodies, international organizations and businesses. If the YP was going to win this election, they weren’t going to start with obligatory baggage to any funder. Nigerians at home and in diaspora raised money in over 30 currencies, even in bitcoin. School children donated as low as N100 from their lunch money to the YP crowdfund. Farmers donated food, bus drivers donated spaces in their buses, villagers volunteered spaces in their huts for the over 7,000 campaign representatives sent across the length and breath of the nation to preach the YP’s gospel of change to the remotest locations in the country.
The incumbent government watched with trepidation as the wave drowned the nation. They tried unsuccessfully to pull out trick cards from the constitution to contest the validity of some of the YP candidates. A horde of young lawyers, working voluntarily, challenged the government. The Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), led by a young lawyer who had also ousted the old guard was sympathetic to the YP’s stance, and speedily facilitated the legal processes intended to stall the YP bull run on all fronts. After a failed attempt to contest legitimacy, with the international community monitoring the events closely, there wasn’t much the incumbent government could do.
In a last minute effort to counter the wave, they elected a much younger presidential candidate to bring division to the YP ranks. Hordes of Nigerians bombarded the candidate’s Instagram handle with a meme where the candidate’s portrait was superimposed on that of an ass and the hashtag #jackass trended for days.
On the morning of the election, the military presence across the country gave the impression that the nation was on the verge of war, and this wasn’t far from the truth. It was a cold war between a younger electorate determined to take charge of their future; and vultures hell bent on holding on to power after ruining the country and forfeiting its collective future. Representatives at election wards stayed awake all night, providing real time updates from their polling stations. I voted that day, anxious of the days ahead.
Will the change we seek materialize?
For years every Nigerian at home and in diaspora had talked about how change would happen. We had discussed cutting the North away like a gangrenous extremity to allow the rest of the nation progress; but here we were Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa rooting for the YP, forgetting our ethnic differences. We had talked about a bloody revolution or a coup; but here we were wearing YP branded t-shirts with pictures of the victims of the now disbanded SARS unit of the Nigerian Police Force; and all of the victims of the Lekki massacre as a reminder that in a bloody revolution, we would be outgunned and outnumbered. We had also talked of the possibility that nothing would change and that Nigerians had an infinitely elastic tolerance for suffering; but the economic hardship that followed the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, compounded by the lacklustre leadership of Gen. Buhari, had pushed many to the cliff edge. Few people, if anyone, could have predicted that change would come from a legion of faceless youths leading virtual Nigeria to achieve only one outcome.
That memorable day, everyone had their eyes glued to their phones all day. By nightfall, there was silent jubilation across the nation. Knowing the old guard’s history, we were careful to jubilate till the final announcements. Years of military dictatorship, interim governments, baseless incarcerations and election cancellations had taught us cautious optimism. Everyone waited for INEC to read out the results. We had won and we knew it. By midday after the elections, young people gathered in public parks, market squares, churches, mosques and bars all over the nation glued to their screens. Nigerians in diaspora that could afford it took the day off and stayed on the phone.
Everyone remembers where they were when the INEC commissioner read out the results. I was at home with my family and we all cried as the results rolled out. We had won. Nigeria had won. YP had snatched over 80% of the legislative seats and our presidential candidate had won with a ridiculously wide margin.
That day, a new Nigeria was born.
Read other articles by Osundolire Ifelanwa here
