 Election Observation Group, Yaga Africa, has called on the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to intensify the education of citizens and stakeholders on the consequences of vote trading, especially on Election Day ahead of the Oshun Gobernatorial polls. The group made this non-via its pre-election observation report made available. As contained in the report, Yaga Africa confirmed that the build-up to the Oshun Gobernatorial poll has been blighted by vote materialising, despite consistent voter education by the election management body and civil society organizations, meanwhile Yaga Africa has urged security agencies to ensure adequate deployment of its personnel to strategic areas during the elections. We are now being joined by the media officer for Yaga Africa, Moshud Issa. Thank you, Moshud, for joining us on the newsbreak this afternoon. Thank you very much for hosting me. Okay, so your organization has confirmed that the build-up to the Oshun Gobernatorial poll has been blighted by vote materialising despite consistent voter education. Now, who is responsible for this and what exactly is the way forward? So basically, as I suspected, the usual suspects are usually the major political parties, major contenders for the election, are the usual suspects for this vote materialising, just as we saw in the Gov. election in Piquiti State. Unfortunately, this has become consistent right from when we started observing the pre-election environment in April, where we think politicians seem to seem to prioritize this vote by an over-issue-based campaign. So those involved are usually the key major stakeholders, the key contenders of going into the election. What is the way forward? First is consistent education of the citizenship, of the prospective voters. Since it seems that the political parties or the political actors are bent on following this route. So first, consistent education of the voters, and then of course, expanding the scope of responsibility of the security agency. The few times, the times we've engaged the security agency, especially the Nigerian police, they said an electoral official has to invite them to make an out-race, especially if the issue of violating comes on. So we think the responsibility of security can be expanded so that they can make an out-race easily when these electoral laws are being violated. And then of course, we also call on the ERCC and ICTC to also develop strategic ways in which to arrest or prevent machineries. We noticed that, from the time they arrested some machineries in the state, just last month, the elections. But this time, we think they should really look to active means to prevent this and also find a way to expand their scope. We can see that they arrest these machineries. But importantly, we have to continue to educate electorates, encourage them not to study about going into their actions. Okay, so you mentioned something about the security. Now that your election is less than two weeks away, your pre-election report confirms that there have been activities of woodlums and courtes in the state. So what does this entails for the elections? So of course, we all know that election can only be credible and transparent when there is in an atmosphere of peace. And we think that these political talks and these courtes have tendency of threatening the peaceful nature of the election. We've seen that in Malaysia. We've seen that in Egypt. We've seen that in Atapumosta. At some point in Malaysia, we observed that the actual disruptor TVC collection at INC office is a major issue. And this is some kind of intimidation that would prevent people from first collecting the activities and then participating in the process. So activities of courtes, activities of political talks can firstly to voter suppression where people would become scared, become intimidated to participate in the process. And then of course, it's always have tendency of affecting the peaceful nature of the election if the security agency did not check this. Fortunately for us, we're able to engage the public relations officer of the Nigerian police and the public relations officer of the civil defense corps yesterday. And they are sure that they are conducting some series of raids to arrest these criminal elements before the election. So we encourage them that they should remain proactive to prevent these political talks from threatening the electoral process. Because of course, election has to be credible. For election to be credible, it has to be in the atmosphere of peace. People need to feel free to come out and vote without fear, without some kind of suppression. So of course, the political security agencies have an important role to actually help this. And it is barely 10 days to the governorship election in Ocean State. Okay, because it is actually very important that that is in place else in my list of political party. So let me ask you, so far would you say that the Austrian electoral are jaring up for the polls? And how do you think the turnout would be? So it's always, it usually tries to first out the electoral commission according to the time table, the timeline of the election, religiously follow this timeline announcement of the election itself. Conducting party, palmaries, voter education, training of ad hoc staff, PVC, continuous voter registration, PVC collection is still ongoing. We have reports confirmed that over 3,000, 3,000 are permanent voters card. And we can confirm that during our visit to the, to the IFE, IFE local government yesterday, we saw citizens still collecting their PVC. So on the part of the electoral commission, we think to a large extent they followed these guidelines, their timeline, religiously. So we all know the candidates for elections, but matters arising in one of the things is we hope that before the election, the commission can tell us the number of PVCs that have been collected before the elections, which is, which this would improve the transparency of the process because we have to know the total number of registered voters, which is about 1.9 million registered voters. But we need to know the number of how many voters are collected before the election. So as we got in turnout, unfortunately, in recent times, there have been steady declining in voter turnout in Nigeria's election. So, and this is, this is usually unpredictable until you go to the election. I remember in eight years ago, we had, would you say that the electionary process has been issue-based? Did you get that? Would you say that the electionary process has been issue-based? The election process has been delighted by votes buying and selling rather than issue-based. Rather than politicians to sell their manifesto to the, to the electorate, they focus on every gift and money. So we would not say it has been issue-based. All right. Thank you so very much, Mushu. This is Alpha. We'll be able to go on this episode. So we have been speaking with Mushu Issa, the media officer who gave us findings from their pre-election report ahead of the offshoot and governorship polls. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.