Does Reducing Constitutional Age Limits Allow for Broader Participation and Inclusion of Youth in Politics and Governance?, by Dr David Ogbeidi, Esq

A youth is universally defined as an individual transitioning from childhood to adulthood; the African Youth Charter specifically categorises this as persons between the ages of 15 and 35. Young Nigerians under 35 years old comprise 39.65% of the 93.47 million registered voters, making youth the largest age group on the electoral register. Yet, prior to 2018, the 1999 Constitution imposed age thresholds for elective office that were widely regarded as excluding an entire demographic cohort from formal political participation, despite that cohort constituting the majority of the electorate.

In response, the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (Fourth Alteration, No. 27) Act 2017, popularly dubbed the “Not Too Young to Run” Act, radically dismantled these age-based obstacles to governance by amending key sections of the supreme law. Thus, section 65 altered federal legislative requirements, reducing the minimum age qualification for election to the Senate from 35 to 30 years, and to the House of Representatives from 30 to 25 years. For grassroots and state-level inclusion, section 106 lowered the qualification age for membership of a State House of Assembly from 30 to 25 years. At the executive level, section 131 reduced the age criterion for the office of President from 40 to 35 years, while section 177 identically lowered the age threshold for State Governor from 40 to 35 years. In principle, these adjustments broadened the political space, and contributed to an unprecedented spike in youth candidacy and enabled several persons under 30 to secure seats in State Houses of Assembly and the federal House of Representatives.

However, this de jure expansion of access to politics and governance did not translate into de facto substantive inclusion of young persons in politics and governance due to a number of other profound systemic barriers. It is therefore not surprising that youth candidacy contracted from 34% in 2019 to 28.6% in 2023, a regression that the constitutional reform alone could not arrest, and which points to structural forces operating independently of the constitutional framework. Chief among these is the commercialisation of politics: exorbitant nomination fees levied by major political parties effectively price out young candidates who lack corporate backing or significant personal wealth. Compounding this, the survival of internal party monopolies and “godfatherism” forces young aspirants to rely on wealthy, older patrons for endorsement, stripping them of independent ideological positioning. High youth unemployment exceeding 40% further drives geographical and economic displacement, severing young voters from the localised party structures within which grassroots trust and social capital must be steadily accumulated over time.

The Electoral Act 2026 was amended to mandate internal democracy within political parties, including transparent, to curb the “godfatherism” structures that currently compel young aspirants to seek patronage from established elites rather than building independent political bases. Particularly, it mandates direct primaries under sections 84(2), 86, 268 and created a judicial remedy for non-compliance under section 88 of the Act. Under section 87, any political party that adopts a consensus candidate must secure the written consent of all cleared aspirants for the position, indicating their voluntary withdrawal from the race and their endorsement of the consensus candidate. Yet, the 2026 primary season demonstrates once again that codification without enforceable real-time INEC-monitored oversight is insufficient. For example, the NDC’s substitution of a centralised delegate process for the direct, ward-level primary mandated by s 84(2), in the case of FCT senatorial aspirant Aisha Yesufu, was possible precisely because s 86 subordinates the direct primaries default to “the guidelines of each political party,” guidelines a party may itself amend at short notice. Moreover, s 88(4)’s bar on judicial intervention before an election means the only available remedy is retrospective disqualification: a process, aspirants like Yesufu deemed not worth pursuing given the personal cost.

Reform should therefore go further: INEC should be empowered not merely to monitor primaries but to certify or void them in real time where a party’s last-minute guideline changes to circumvent direct-primary requirements, and the Act should mandate a standardised, auditable vote-counting protocol for party primaries equivalent to that used in general elections. It is clear that the conduct of primaries across the APC, PDP, NDC, ADC and Labour Party revealed widespread allegations of pre-selected candidates, fraudulent vote-counting through manipulated queue counts, last-minute substitution of direct primaries with closed-door delegate processes, and disputed results contested by margins of over 100,000 votes in some cases.

In conclusion, the evidence suggests that while the Fourth Alteration of the 1999 Constitution successfully expanded de jure access to elective office by lowering constitutional age thresholds, this objective of meaningful youth inclusion in politics and governance remains substantially unrealised. The reality of severe financial barriers, structural corruption, and socio-economic exclusion continue to keep de facto political power concentrated within the established ruling elite, such that the declining youth candidacy figures between 2019 and 2023 demonstrate that entrenched patterns of exclusion persist unabated. Until these barriers are dismantled, the Fourth Alteration risks remaining a largely symbolic gesture, one that grants young Nigerians the right to stand for office while leaving the practical conditions for doing so firmly out of reach for the vast majority of the youth.

To close the gap between formal eligibility and substantive participation, the following reforms are proposed:

• First, the Independent National Electoral Commission and the National Assembly should introduce statutory caps on political party nomination fees, with differentiated (reduced) fee structures for candidates under the age of 35, to directly address the commercialisation of candidacy that the “Not Too Young to Run” Act left untouched.

• Second, a dedicated Youth Political Participation Fund, financed through a small statutory levy on party registration and campaign expenditure, could provide grants or low-interest financing to first-time youth candidates, mitigating the economic displacement caused by unemployment levels exceeding 40%.

• Third, civic education and mentorship programmes, delivered in partnership with INEC, civil society organisations, and tertiary institutions, should be scaled to build the grassroots social capital and party-organisational experience that young aspirants are currently denied due to geographic and economic mobility constraints.

• Fourth and finally, future constitutional or electoral reform efforts should be evaluated by multivariate barriers and not monocausal or univariate barriers like age-based variables that account for exclusion.

Dr David Imonitie Ogbeidi, Esq., a lawyer and a Public Affairs Analyst, writes from Victoria Island, Lagos.

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