70% of the youth would vote No if BBI referendum was held today – poll

A new poll now shows that 70 per cent of Kenya’s young people would oppose the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) referendum if it was held today, and only 30 per cent of them would support it.

The poll, released by the Emerging Leaders Foundation (ELF) Africa, revealed that 40 per cent of the male youth would oppose it while 21 per cent would support it; whereas 30 per cent of the female youth would oppose the BBI referendum and 9 per cent would vote in favor.

70 per cent of the poll participants said they did not get a chance to personally, or through an organization, give their views to the BBI Steering Taskforce that was moving around the country while 30 per cent did.

50 per cent of them have read the BBI report, 12 per cent have not read it while a further 38 per cent have only perused a few sections.

54 per cent of the respondents said they came across the BBI report on WhatsApp, 18 per cent on Twitter, 5 per cent on Facebook, 4 per cent on Email, 10 per cent have the hard copy while 9 per cent have not even seen it.

According to the report, 47 per cent of the respondents do not think the BBI report is youth-friendly while only 8 per cent believe it is.

Some of the things the youth liked most about the report however include; the proposed tax holiday, ward development fund, abolishment of the woman representative position, the 4-year grace period for HELB beneficiaries, 5 per cent reward for corruption whistleblowers, abolition of sitting allowance for public servants, as well as the increase of national to county sharing of revenue to 35 per cent.

Their proposed amendments to the BBI report include; job creation (9 per cent), gender equality (7 per cent), reduction in number of elected representatives (33 per cent) and tougher rules for the corrupt (4 per cent).