 Alright, thanks for staying with us. The president of Nigeria is elected using a modified two-round system. To be elected in the first round, candidates must receive a plurality of the vote and over 25% of the vote in at least 24 of the 36 states in Nigeria. And if no candidate passes this threshold, a second round will be held between the top candidate and the next candidate to have received the majority of votes in the highest number of states. Now, how do you know about the electoral system and who would you be voting for come February 25th? And, you know, what's your general overview of the 2023 general elections that is coming? Now, please just hear what you have to remember. You can join the conversation, send us an SMS or WhatsApp to do it. 80384663, you can also tweet at us at WeishawAfrica on the hashtag Weishaw. Alright, thank you very much. Are you allowed to say who you're voting for? No. As a member of the press, I'm not allowed to say who I'm voting for. But, hey, what's your take generally now? I mean, since all the, what's it called, the things are unfolding now. The elections are coming closer. What's your take? So, I was having a conversation with someone this evening and we're talking about, you know, the elections, we're talking about the state of the country as it is. And then he said to me, oh, it seems a lot of people are now moving from one of these parties and then this other party is getting a lot of attention. And I'm like, well, yeah, but I think people's minds are made up. My only pain now is that the people that are supporting a particular party are not, they don't have the activities. So that's the only, that's my only grievance. But, yeah, I don't know, like we discussed a lot about this whole thing last week. I don't know how this is, I'm fingers crossed because I don't know how this is going to actually affect the coming elections. Well, yeah, we had one 18 days ago. Chelsea, how about you? Honestly, I feel like the more 25th February draws closer, the more nervous I get because, I mean, there is this joke. I'm sorry, I'm going to have to throw in a joke here. You know how they say, say God that big, three fields a day or something. Like at some point when I get nervous, I'm like, God that big, which literally means like God help us in Nigeria. So February 25th, frankly, discussing Nigerian elections, it gets me emotional. I'm not going to lie because we have like these different options. And for me, it's like there is only one way to go. And for a lot of people, there's like only one way to go. It could be left, it could be right and stuff. But I'm just hoping that before we vote that we, you know, check our verifications very well, you know. Let me call on Nama Effan. Hello Nama. You've been losing Nama. Hello. Okay, so I'm here. So what are your thoughts on the general elections coming in? I'll bring in our guests. My thoughts are, who would it be? With the expectation of Nigerians, the concerns, the level of disruption that has taken place so far, it is an uphill task indeed for whoever is going to step into the shoes. So like, sadly, I'm concerned, I'm prayerful, and I'm hoping that Nigerians will take the lead and actually step out to vote for who they believe is the candidate for now. So I'm filled with mixed feelings. We might say that it's a combination of mixed feelings. And as the day draws near, we're trusting that the right decisions will be made. I think Nigerians have come to that point where they are really tired, and it's not just about change anymore. Now that change has binoculars on. So let's see how it's going to turn out in just a few days. Absolutely. All right. So Khadija Okronolamedi is Nigeria's youngest presidential aspirant and recognized as one of the leading ladies, Africa's top 100 most inspiring women of 2022. Khadija is the founder and CEO of Slice Media, a strategic brand consultancy and communication agency. She's the deputy director general of the SDP Presidential Campaign Council, and she's joined us live in studio to discuss the 2023 elections. Thank you so much, Khadija, for joining us. Thank you. It's so, so, so interesting that when you were chasing your own, what's it called, the primaries before the primaries, it was so tough getting you, but we're happy to have you anyway. Even though I would have loved to have you then. But hey, we're happy to have you. So Khadija, let me piggyback from where Norma stopped, right? How sensitive is this 2023 elections? Because again, like everybody is saying, there's a bit of a prehension in the air. I think there's a heightened sense of consciousness amongst the youth and a lot of agitation in the air. And, you know, I mean, what Chinelo had said about people and their PVCs, the truth is, even the people that had PVCs, most of them have left Nigeria. They've relocated out of the country, you know, and all of that. So the sensitivity of this time is quite tough, right? You know, so you're looking through the 2023 elections that is fast approaching. What's your general overview of it? How sensitive is it? And, you know, how ready are we? Thank you again for having me. Thank you. Thank you. It is sensitive because we are at a crossroads. This is another crossroads where we have to make the right decision. I'm a member of the SDP, as you know, and we are a party that deals with ideas. So, like you mentioned, it's not a time to look left or right. It's a time to go forward. Going forward means that everybody, the heightened sense of people's awareness now, we need to cultivate it and direct it, to channel it into the right place. You know, everybody in the country understands that we seem to be being dragged into this abyss. And if you don't want to be a part of that, if you're sure that if you know which everybody is sure of, we need to make a decision and make some adjustments now. We also need to understand what politics is. I think for a long time, we've been conditioned by so-called leaders that want to keep us where we are. So, we're conditioned to believe every four years there's a time to party, to dance, to get Ankara. You know, they make it a fun, yes, life should be fun, but it's a serious matter and it's a decision that affects everybody's lives into your home. So, I think we've been relaxed for so long and they've been playing this game every four years. They understand that and it's a conditioning. So, once they condition the people to be a certain way, they expect that they can come back and use you every time it's time for elections. And so, right now it's critical because we have a candidate that is, if you think about, if you talk about the issues around, this candidate has won flat out. You know, now it's time to take that and take it to the streets. So, it's a difference. It's not a popularity contest. It's a contest of ideas. It's a contest of solutions. How do we get from where we are to where we need to be? And my candidate, who is at Iwalea de Bayo, is quite knowledgeable on what to do from day one. It's not a situation where, okay, I'm a popular candidate or a situation where, you know, these things should be said. Absolutely. It's not a situation where people can go from, you know, people who have held us down for so long until we go a certain way. It's time for us to sit down there and actually decide whether we want to go. Okay. Okay, so, you know what, let's quickly go on a break. When we come back from the break, we'll continue the conversation. Stay with us. We'll be right back. All right. Thanks for staying with us. Now, if you're just tuned in, we have with us Khadija Lamidi. She's the Deputy Director for, and Deputy Director General for the SDP Presidential Campaign Council. And we're discussing the 2023 general elections. And, I mean, before we went on a break, you said something about your candidate knowing the, what's it called, knowing the issues. But you cannot help but look at popularity, right, when it comes to any elections, right. What brought President Mohammedu Buhari to that seat in Asurok was because of popularity, you know, the fact that he was popular amongst people. So, when you say that, I mean, in Nigerian politics, do you still believe that Nigerian politics is about knowing the job and the ideals or just about who is more popular or who can do a lot more cash? That's the question, right? Yeah. So, it should be about who has the ideas. And, like, okay, let me give you a theme. The theme for our campaign is farewell to poverty and insecurity. Because this theme was the theme for the Abiola campaign 30 years ago. Now, that poverty has given birth to a grandchild called insecurity because it was not handled then. I don't see any of the other candidates speaking about the issues on ground. There's having back and forth comedy, comic shows, just to get you out of the, get you away from the issues on ground. And, you know, this shows you that there's actually nothing, no plans on ground. And this is how we've been running over the years. And I need everybody to understand that we do, we keep saying we're looking for leaders. What Nigeria lacks is leadership. And as you know, Iran, the reason why Iran was, I knew that we needed a new type of leadership. It's not the, I am definitely not satisfied with who we call leaders in Nigeria for me to get up and say, you know what, this doesn't cut it. Now, as God will have it, I come into a party, which is a party different from all the other popular parties on ground. And it shows you that it's a party that attracts ideas. And this is why we met on the campaign trail. And I'm like, okay, you won the contest, you won the primaries. Let us start with internal democracy. If we're talking about real democracy, let's start in here. You won, fine. I'm not going to go to court and scream and shout and that. I know I'm going to support your candidacy and let's move the strain forward. Because going forward, we do have our leaders, the leaders we need to move this country forward are in our generation. And the generation is coming. And the generation is slightly above us. We cannot keep looking back to the same old people to come do the same old things. It's not going to work. It's expected different results. It's not going to work. So the leadership of every generation is there. But we just, do we look for them? I think we feel that they should be guarding money and in a certain, those and that's not what leadership looks like, real leadership. So these are the issues that we are here to talk about. We're here to talk about insecurity, how to tackle it, education. We're here to talk about health, the health issues that, you know, the health sector and how many people are. I mean, just today I got a message about someone losing their life due to our medical facilities. We have so much that is wrong. And the only common factor is that we lack leadership. So this is what we're bringing to the table. And this is what my candidates and my party in general, we're not, we're not, we're not taking, participating in the drama because it doesn't concern us. We didn't cause this drama. What we're doing is we want to, we are looking for solutions how to get there. Well, you know your new media. Well, let me let fans hear. Well, yeah, I do, as much as I do believe that, you know, selecting a leader should be based on ideas and values. But I also think popularity plays a role. But I'll leave it alone. Popularity does. That's why we're here. That's why we're all coming out to the media and talking about what we have to offer. Fantastic. So you talked about security being that your party mostly focuses on security and poverty eradication. Am I right? Yeah. So now there is an issue on ground about Nigeria. It's like we are in an eternal war against insecurity. It's like the more we say or the more leadership or government says they are fighting it, the worse it gets. So your party, is there anything different you're planning to do? Because it's like, like Nigeria is stuck on replay when it comes to, you know, security issues and it worries everyone. I think for me, one of the major things I'm looking at in, you know, the manifestos is I want someone who understands how best to handle this insecurity issue. You know, one thing is poverty is man made. So it's definitely something that the leadership is doing wrong. And another thing is security is a psychological state of mind. So you could have leaders. Our leaders have 20, 30 armed security guards around them. Do they feel safe? I don't think so. So security is definitely not arms. It's a situation where you can get the country, the whole psychology of the country to believe in the leadership. That they actually buy into it and they channel their energies to ensure that it works. The government works. So you need to actually form a government. What we've had is, we've had the same government for so many, for 60 years, but we change our president. But the government remains the same. The same people in there for the past 60 years have been there. We need to change that. We need to bring in the fresh ideas, the fresh minds, because this is almost like an independence all over again. If our forefathers and founding fathers didn't think to do what we want to do now, we'll still be in colonial times. They didn't have the resources, they didn't have the money, they didn't have the power. But they had the ideas and they came together and they did what they needed to do to free us. So now we, they say there's a time in my language when you're born, there's a time you then give yourself a rebirth. That's a really new thinking. That's what you say, where we are in Nigeria. You want to comment then, I'll come to you in a moment. Okay, yeah. I understand when you say that your party is coming in based on eradicating poverty and then also stopping insecurity as well. But then what plans exactly? I know you've heard them, I think what you may have been biased. Yes. What plans exactly do you guys have or what plans do you intend to put in place to act on eradicating poverty? Okay, well first thing is, what are you thinking about policies and plans? Most of the governments that we have now or the leaders that we have now, I don't like calling them leaders. I'm sorry, I find it difficult too because they're not leading us anywhere. And the people in government that we have now, the people that we have in government now have always, they think, I think they think it's for a first limited few. So the government has generally built, every policy that is put in place is directed at somebody or a company or something. It's not for the people. So you come in and you could say, okay, I did the electricity or I did, I put down a policy for CBN, for example. Did they really consider the market woman and how she needs cash on her daily trade? Did they consider the fisherman that goes to catch his fish and has to sell them so he can provide food for his family on a daily basis? No, they thought about politicians and how politicians will not use the money. So the plans are always, they never get into the household and that is why poverty remains because you're enriching a few and the majority who are the people of Nigeria are not touched. So these are some of the policies. When you create policies and plans, they have to be specific. If you look at Chapter 2 of the Constitution, if you take a read of and look at it, Nigeria negates every single line of that chapter. Every single line, Nigeria leadership negates it. So if you have, let me give you for example, they say, oh, we're going to build a so-so-so bridge. The contract is 200 billion. Fine, they'll say they're trying to move the economy and blah, blah, blah. So guess what, that money doesn't get to the laborer who is in the quarry who has to carry some of the material. And it doesn't get, they're not concerned about the little man. They're concerned about the person who is going to take the contract and is going to share it to his cronies. So these are some of the things that we need to, we are people focused. The Social Democratic Party has always been people and it's always been a popular party. So you might think that we're an insurgent campaign. Yes, we're insurgent because we're coming up again. But if you go to most households and we don't, our campaign is not call everybody to a stadium and tell them, oh come, no, we go to you where you are working. So we're working, the carpenter is working. So what you're doing is meeting them. Where they are. Let me come to you Noma then I'll come back again with another question. Yeah. Yes, I'm here. I was listening to the community and one caught my attention is that she mentioned the reason and including the Niger citizens in or considering the Niger citizens in their policy making. But community, I just wanted to mention one policy that they're going to change the Niger, the average Nigerian citizens experience and truly make them feel that, yes, SDP is doing something for me as a Nigerian. So I just want to know just what policy that is going to transform the average Nigerian. There are lots of policies if I want to think about them. The first one I think is that the government is going to be formed. When I say governments, I mean the top government officials are going to be working pro bono. Now this is what my principle has said and it's something that is exciting actually because if you have a president that is not working for money, if you have ministers that are not working for money, it gives the Nigerian people some trust. So you have to have trust in your government and you know that, okay, at a certain point, now we need public service. This is really the time when we need public service. That's one. The second is that there's a policy where federal governments is going to partner. So what we're having now is we have a problem with availability. So even schools, by the time you're in secondary school, you're doing common entrance, you're already fighting for how many federal secondary schools do we have, how many federal universities do we have. So you have so many people coming into the system that cannot fit in. So that's one of the first things we're going to do is that we're going to ensure that government partners and has more schools in every district so that there are more opportunities and people can get in without the federal character affecting you or all those things. So that's a second. So education is, if you want to build a country, first educate its people. So education is one sector. And then in the, let me think, in the, which other policy has he always spoken about? He's spoken about leadership, health, and then, okay. So also it's more of social welfare. So everything that we do, because we're a party that is the Social Democratic Party, everything is geared towards the social well-being of people, bringing dignity back to the people. If you have a place to live, housing is something that needs to be sorted out. I know that I did very well once I had housing sorted. I think then I started to think a bit bigger than I don't need more than what I have. So I started to think a bit more outside of me. It's no more self-preservation. It's now, okay, how are we going to help others? So it's something that's the core of our campaign. Okay, so let me come back to, because we ran out of time. So I want to understand what, you know, so we understand that certain parties are, you know, because I think no political party likes to be called the small party. Everybody likes to believe that, oh, they are here, they've been around and all of that. But you see in the news, right, the parties that keep ringing in your head are three main parties, the PD, PD, ABC and the Labour Party. The Labour Party is only coming up just because of the principle that is the flag bearer of the party. So if we want to look at the restructuring of Nigeria, do you think we can continue to sustain parties that are like just too much to count? Can we ever get to that point where maybe your ideologies aligns with another party's ideologies and everybody just comes together and there's a merger? If we truly want to break the, call them cabal or whatever you want to call them, if we want to break those structures, it is in numbers, politics is numbers. So when we're talking about popularity, I'm not even talking about popularity in the sense of, what's it called, that maybe the party being there and all of that. We're talking about popularity in the sense of how many people can mouth the candidate's name, because social media is also giving me an idea of who is there. We go on the streets, we have our box pop, we ask, who are you voting for? They are very likely going to be three names that I would mention. So we understand that these parties are there, but I feel like 19 political parties is just too much. If we want to make a headway, isn't it possible that some of these parties can align and merge with all these other parties that your ideologies align with each other and then we now have a stronger force to fight whatever it is that, I mean like you rightly said, I cannot bring myself to call them leaders as well, because most of them are just doing what it is that they're doing. Nobody's actually leading the country anyway. So can we have those kind of, do you foresee those kinds of structures coming up out offshoot of this election? Because this election is actually very, very critical. A lot of people that have not even been interested in politics, they are already awake. So how can we leverage that, you know, political parties? I'm supposed to be part of the political party. Let's start having more people join political parties so that the right candidates are chosen as flag bearers of the parties. This is the reason why I got into politics at this age and at this point in time of my life. It was, it needed to be done. But like you said, we are talking to many parties. We are having conversations with many of the parties and these parties are parties that, you know, we share ideology and conversations are going on, not with the parties that many of you might, I mean the parties that we don't have, we don't share ideology but other parties are looking at our candidates as well and looking like okay, this person has something to offer, this person looks like, you know, knows where he's going, which is quite interesting. So those conversations are going but until they are finalized, then, you know, we go through. But then, you know, when you say that parties are popular, it's also, it's a function of the media. Whether we like it or not, the media also is owned. We have different ownership of media. So the media also helps propagates who, you know, is... Who is now in the face of some people, yes. So it's not, it's not, if a change or something, you know, most things that are positive or some things that need to be done are always hard, they're always harder, where right now at this point we're climbing uphill. So it's going to, it's getting easier but it's an uphill battle. It's something that we understand and we have prepared for it. It's not something that we're taking lightly. But most of the, most... SDP right now is the oldest party in the race and it's a one-horse race, I need to say, because we are the White Horse Party. So you can, you can, you can take that to the bank. So we are most, we're the oldest party and so when you go to homes and you talk to people, they do know the SDP. They are aware of the SDP. They know what we, our mandate was truncated. Our democracy was truncated 30 years ago. If that was able to, and this is the same mandate we hold, it's not anything different. Trust me, it's a popular choice. It's a people's choice. It's the same mandate God has given us again. You know, so it's something that we need to, right now we need an elite consensus, people who know that we're going the right wrong way. Most people know we're going the wrong way but because of personal interests, biases, blah, blah, blah, they think, oh, you know what, how do I, this is not the time for that. This is the time. Let us get over this home. Yes. And let's get over this hump and move on. Absolutely. Let's take comments quickly because we run out of time. Okay, so I'll start first. This is Austin from Delta. He says, I foresee a situation resulting to a runoff with no outright winner in the first ballot because of the required constitutional spread to win outrightly. My concern is that if eventually a perceived candidate among the popular three wins, he will be impeached within the shortest time because whether you like it or not, the majority of the National Assembly seats, the majority of the National Assembly seats that, seats that obviously belong to other parties. Parties will get him impeached with slightest excuse. Sorry, pardon. Politics is beyond academic permutations. Another scenario likely to play out is the cabal or oligarchy syndrome, which will be a major master stroke. The next president, whoever will come on board, is going to face the tough task of unifying the country thereafter because of deep seated hatred, suspicion, agitations, as well as ethnic and religious sentiments which are currently being undermined. God bless Nigeria. If you could give me my debut, please tell me what are you saying, hashtag wins. The presidential election, which way forward? In the North Shell, Nigerians are sick and tired of the situations of things happening in Nigeria and were clamoring for a change. The two most popular parties, PDP and ABC, have been in power over the years and they've taken us nowhere. That is why we need to change communism. Since these two parties have failed, I would suggest we try something else. There's no point trying something that has failed. It doesn't make sense to me at all. I'm excited to see my dear beautiful sister, Sanzi, back. Happy to see you. Thank you, Daniel. Unfortunately, we ran out of time. Thank you so much, Khadija. We'll be rooting for your candidates. We see his ideology and we know that he has good intentions. So whatever way we can, we'll keep on supporting it. I think Austin rightly said we do have a choice in this election. Even if we didn't have in the past, we always have a choice. No, we have choices in this particular election. So we see you guys. Thank you so much. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you, Noma. Thank you, ladies. Now, before we go and show you followers across all our social media handles that wish Africa could interact with us further, drop a comment and more importantly, follow all our engagements on social media, like share and invite your families and friends to watch and follow the conversation. We'll see you guys tomorrow at 8 p.m. Also bring another great conversation to your screen.