2023 election and the so-called Peter Obi youth supporters, By Sola Joshua

I have tried to stay away from this issue but honestly this is becoming really ridiculous. Truth is, all the three leading candidates have a fair number of youths supporting them.

The people that have been advocating for Tinubu and Atiku on social media are mostly youths or has any of you been arguing with only grandpas and grandmas within your sm space?

I don’t get this unnecessary hysteria some media folks are trying to create. The recent APC/Tinubu solidarity marches in Ibadan and Ondo with mammoth crowds were attended by almost entirely youths.

Get a bowl of clean water, wash your eyes thoroughly, and then carefully compare the demographics of the Ibadan/Ondo crowd for Tinubu with the crowd for Obi elsewhere recently. They’re all youths. Guess what, the Tinubu crowd is even larger than the Obi crowd from what we’ve seen so far. So what’s this fear mongering all about?

Please let no one trouble your heart with any jankara analysis my good people. Mr Obi, the candiate they’re subtly campaigning for with all these funny analysis and foreboding posts doesn’t have a majority of the Nigerian youths behind him. Perhaps a majority of Igbo youths, and rightly so, he is Igbo.

When you rid your heart of all fantasies and prejudices, leave your online polling units and mirror-in-the-sky analysis, then go to the streets and the hinterlands you will realise that Tinubu, Atiku and even Kwankwaso have massive hordes of youths supporting them.

If you think the youths of SW will vote Obi ahead of Tinubu or the youths of NE Obi ahead of Atiku then I’m truly sorry for you. Let’s not even start with the NW and NC.

The mistake some of you keep making is myopically thinking that the only people qualified to be called youths going into next year’s election are the smartphone wielding, social media disturbing, sorosoke-gbenusoke Obi supporting youths. The joke is on you.

-Joshua is a Human Resources practitioner based in London