NOSA EGHAGHA
The founder and Chief Executive Officer of twenty Bucks Creative, Charbel Jarrouje, has said that without active youth inclusion and stakeholders’ engagement, electoral violence will continue to persist despite the signing of a Peace Accord by the Presidential candidates of the various political parties.
Addressing journalists in Abuja, the socio-political analyst who is also an advertising and marketing guru aid that it is imperative to bring the youths to the table to sign a peace pact being that they are the ones used to perpetuate violence during elections.
Speaking further, he said that electoral violence can only be curbed through youth inclusion which includes robust sensitisation using various youth-friendly dispositions in a bid to forestall violence.
However, he disclosed that plans are underway to launch a youth-friendly initiative that will bring all the youths in various political parties under one umbrella to promote non-violent elections in the country.
According to him, the initiative tagged “Sports for Peace”, a football tournament where youths from various political parties will present a team that will represent their different parties and play against each other to promote non-violent elections in Nigeria.
He disclosed that in the course of the tournament, all the National Youth Leaders of the political parties will be made to sign a Peace Declaration to deliberately promote non-violent elections.
Jarrouje disclosed that the one long week tournament will be held at the main bowl of the Moshood Abiola National stadium, Abuja in the coming weeks.
Furthermore, he noted that the football tournament scheduled for December 2022 has secured the backing of the Nigeria Football Federation, even as he also revealed that the will be prize money for not only the winners but for all the participating teams.
“Sports has always been a unifier, from all aspects of the human race, from the rich, poor, black, white and no matter the culture you come from. But unfortunately, our politicians have failed to understand or fail to use the right medium to unify the people of Nigeria.
“But now is the right time to unite our people because the rate of violence has increased in the past month due to the electioneering campaigns.
“For God’s sake, even the Peace accord isn’t working at the moment and I can give my opinion on why I feel it is not effective.
Who fights the war? “Young people” “the youths” not the old rich men.
“In other for this to work, we have to involve the youth and that’s why we are working on signing a Peace Declaration that all the National Youth Leaders of the Political parties, Youth representatives, etc., would be part of the signing.
“I believe this would help change the mindset of the youth who are all been used as a tool to perpetuate violence.
“It will give a sense of belonging. As we all know, our people ‘don’ open eyes and mouths. People now know what they need and want. Nigerians of two years ago are no longer the Nigerians of today. We are now exposed, we are now aware. One of the platforms that have helped with such improvement is Social Media and the Internet in general.
“As you all know, Sports for Peace Initiative is not limited to just football, rather it’s sports generally but we agreed on football because football is one of the best tools to unite Nigerians. With all due respect to all other sports but Nigerians appreciate football more.
“Now I’d like to relate “Football, Violence and Peace together” by giving two examples, one of Africa’s football legends, Didier Drogba was able to stop the war in Ivory Coast for years just because of the tournament he hosted in his country. FIFA just recently launched a “football unites the world campaign”. FIFA themselves mentioned football as one of the major vehicles of promoting Peace and unfortunately, Nigeria was missing at the launch.”
Speaking further, he disclosed that some Sponsors who believes in the game have already keyed into the peace building process even as he called on other good-spirited Nigerians and firms to come on board as sponsors noting that the game is strictly apolitical.
“It is strictly Sports for Peace, even on the Jerseys “No political party logo” would be printed on it but instead, colours would represent each party, for instance, Red may represent one party while Blue represents another.
“We are glad to announce to you that as of the last count, at least 4 political parties have indicated strong interest while the rest have contacted us and we are currently working on the process of bringing them on board.
“We have also gotten the full backing of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) who would also be giving us all the necessary technical support that would be needed to make the tournament a success.
We also have prizes for the winners (1st prize, 2nd prize and 3rd prize). They would also be a consolation prize for all the participating teams.”
