Chain Reactions Africa, a public relations and communications consulting firm, has urged Nigerian political leaders and government institutions to pay closer attention to changing youth behaviour and expectations ahead of the 2027 general elections.

The firm said young Nigerians are increasingly judging political institutions and leaders by evidence of performance, accountability and delivery rather than campaign promises, warning that failure to understand the evolving youth culture could have significant consequences for the 2027 elections.

It made the submission on Wednesday in Lagos during the public presentation of its fourth youth trends and culture intelligence report, Youth Futures 2026: A Culture Intelligence Report on African Youth, held at the Sheraton Hotel, Ikeja.

The event attracted young Nigerians, creatives, culture-shapers, marketing professionals, government representatives and other stakeholders.

The report, produced by strategists, trend spotters, culture anthropologists and industry experts working across brands, business and youth culture in Africa, examines emerging behaviours, expectations and cultural shifts shaping the continent’s younger generation.

Speaking at the event, the Managing Director and Chief Strategist of Chain Reactions Africa, Israel Opayemi, said Nigerian youths could no longer be treated as a constituency to be courted only during election campaigns.

He said their experiences and expectations were increasingly determining how leadership, institutions and public life were judged.

“Young people are not simply the audience of the future; they are already living through the future that the rest of society is only beginning to understand,” Opayemi said.

He said issues around employment, migration, identity, technology, relationships and meaning were no longer isolated youth concerns but important indicators of the direction of Nigerian society.

Opayemi cited data from the Independent National Electoral Commission showing that Nigerians aged 18 to 34 accounted for 37,060,399 of the 93,469,008 registered voters in the 2023 general election, representing 39.65 per cent of registered voters.

According to him, the figure underscores the potential influence of young voters on the 2027 elections, particularly if they turn out in significant numbers.

He said the report’s findings on governance should serve as a warning to political leaders and public institutions, noting that young Nigerians had not necessarily abandoned the idea of governance but had become increasingly distrustful of institutions they believed had repeatedly failed them.

“Young Nigerians have not given up on governance; they have given up on the specific institutions that have consistently failed them,” he said.

Opayemi said the report identified self-trust and peer trust as relatively strong among young Nigerians, followed by community trust, while institutional trust remained the weakest layer.

He said institutions could no longer demand trust simply because of their status, arguing that trust must be established through what he described as “proof loops” — demonstrable performance, delivery and accountability.

“In the world of Nigerian youths today, institutions do not earn trust by asking for it any longer. Rather, they earn it by doing the thing they were supposed to do or promised to do and being held accountable when they fail,” he said.

The Chain Reactions Africa chief strategist also highlighted what he described as a widening gap between the speed at which youth culture evolves and the pace at which institutions respond.

“Culture now moves in hours and days, brands respond in weeks and months, and government policy in months and years,” he said.

Opayemi therefore called for cultural intelligence to become part of public policy and business decision-making rather than something organisations seek only after problems have emerged.

He also said the 2020 #EndSARS protests had fundamentally changed the relationship between a generation of young Nigerians and the state, leaving many young people with a more evidence-based approach to judging government behaviour.

He said scepticism generated by that experience could only be addressed through demonstrable change.

Unpacking the report, the Executive Vice President, Strategy and Innovation at Chain Reactions Africa, Franklin Ozekhome, said the findings also showed that trust in public institutions could be rebuilt.

He cited the digitalisation of tax processes by the Nigeria Revenue Service, visible infrastructure delivered by some state governments and public agencies that had responded to complaints with tangible solutions as examples of how institutional trust could be restored.

“Legitimacy is now a function of demonstrated competence and accountability,” Ozekhome said.

He identified four areas where the gap between youth realities and policy responses was particularly significant: youth employment policies designed around formal jobs that many young Nigerians would never hold; mental health infrastructure; digital rights and online safety; and policies supporting the creative economy.

According to him, young people are not merely participants in the economy but are actively influencing industries, communities and the movement of culture.

He described four paradoxes shaping young Nigerians’ relationship with authority as “Intimacy Without Trust, Visibility Without Safety, Belief Without Institutions and Mobility Without Arrival.”

Ozekhome said belief was increasingly being constructed outside traditional institutions such as churches, governments and formal organisations, while increased mobility did not necessarily translate into economic or social progress.

He also warned political actors against attempting to appropriate youth culture merely through language, aesthetics and social media visibility.

According to him, the same digital infrastructure that helped mobilise young Nigerians during #EndSARS can also be used to facilitate coordinated disinformation.

“The tools of power are not exclusively in good hands,” he warned.

Ozekhome further cautioned against treating Nigerian youths as a homogeneous voting bloc, stressing that age alone could not explain their behaviour and political choices.

“Lagos is not Nigeria. Life’s condition, not age, is the variable that matters most,” he said, adding that young people in Lagos, Kano, Enugu, Port Harcourt and Ibadan could have markedly different experiences, priorities and decision-making frameworks.

He argued that campaigns based solely on visibility would therefore struggle to generate genuine belief among young Nigerians.

The report’s central message to political leaders, according to the firm, is that understanding young Nigerians requires more than producing campaign messages targeted at them.

It urged leaders to “listen before messaging, deliver before asking for trust, and treat young Nigerians as authors of the country’s next chapter rather than an audience for it.”