 It's still cross politics. Now we'll talk about the Electoral Act amendment bill, the Interparty Advisory Council in Lagos State has called on President Mohamed Abqahari to accept to the Electoral Act Amendment Bill, 2021, without delay. Now the Eipack chairman in Lagos State, Mr James Adishina لala to say that there was an urgent need to overhaul the electoral sy'n cael ei wneud o'r gyfarfod am gyfan o'r cyfleol, ddiogelio i dangos, ac yw'r ddwylliant. Yn oedd yn gweithio ar y dyfodol ni, mae Gweithio Bwyllfa Nesafol, dr Leonard Ndenwer, a'r llygol cyflawnoedd, Tungi Abdulhamid. Ddod y mynd i gyda'n gweithio'r cyflawnodol i'r gweithio. Mae'n gweithio, mae'n gweithio. Mae'n gweithio. Mae'n gweithio'n gweithio dr Ndenwer, Because of course this is AIPAC pushing for this to be done. I'm wondering, do we need to push the president a sense to this bill? This is something that every Nigerian needs. This is something the government also says it needs for the electoral processes in this country to be smooth sailing, to be free for incredible. Why do we also have to urge the president to append his signature? Mrs. Zawar, can you hear me? I don't think you can hear me. Well, I think we're having connection issues. So Tunji, I'm going to toss that question to you. Go ahead. We ought not to put pressure on the president to sign a letter of bane into law. People are pushing for that because of what is on the ground. You know, if you are aware of what the governors are having meetings to ensure that a certain part of the law did not pass. And probably because of that, the president may just because of one particular aspect of the law throw away everything because we are used to throwing the baby away with the batwater in this country. Remember the last eight assembly? So just due to one reason that allowed them throw away every good other thing in that law. They are thinking of that. Probably because the governor could be able to inflate the president, the president may change his mind and not sign the adding to law. So they are trying to push him to do it on time so that it will not go the way of other bees that have been thrown out. But again, on the issue of the Electoral Act bill in itself, there's so many amendments, so many things that have been taken out and several things that have been put in. And the people who are sitting on the floor of this National Assembly majority of them obviously are Mr President's party. So whatever is in that particular bill that will be made law, obviously these people have seen it. They've given it a nod. So again, I'm still wondering why that bill will be tossed under the carpet or tossed into the bin like every other bill. It's very important that we need it because 233 is around the corner and we saw some of the elections that have happened so far and the inconsistencies that have happened. But this bill is supposedly to change all of those inconsistencies. So again, why do we need to be having this conversation? Yeah, you see, unfortunately, I'm one of those who are also not in support of the direct primary for parties. I'm one of them. I believe it's good for us. I believe it's the best for us. But I also believe we are not ripe to do it now because we don't have the mechanism. We don't have the logistics. We don't have the demands. What do you mean by we don't have the mechanisms? Because I'm thinking that if we put it somewhere in our bills, then we should be able to make those things available. Yes, we should be able to make it available. But I have lived in Nigeria for long and I know the way we operate. I witnessed the last primary of certain parties, whereby they said they were the direct primary. It wasn't direct primary. So just a location of figures. That is why you see some people will win the primary with 5 million foot or 3 million foot. And in the course of the main election, it will score just like 200 or even 50,000 or 10,000. You see, I believe we don't have the mechanism. What do I mean by mechanism here? For example, the basic responsibility to have this direct primary go very well is the data, the federal data of the parties. I'm not aware that there's any party in this country that has a valid registered photo of members in this country. And I'm not sure they can be verified even if they present one. I'm not sure we can verify whether or not these are actual party members. Really? But the APC has just gone through a process of re-registering their party members. So you're telling me that that whole process was a total waste of time because there is no register? No, I'm not saying they can half register. They can half register. But when it comes to the election itself, people who are not on the register are the people that will be on the queue. On some time, they will not even have any people. They will just allocate figures and that will be all. And you see, most importantly again, most of the party, what we are trying to call is to reduce the influence of a bus or play or Godfather. I tell you that direct primary will not eradicate it because if you remember the last primary in Lagos, I'm a Tawolw and I'm a direct primary. I'm a direct primary. Tawolw at that time was not popular. People don't know him because that's what the leader of the party is looking for. And that's what he wanted at that time. He was in the ticket and he won't, like he won't with millions of votes. At the main election, he won't with just 800,000 votes or something like that. So it means those who are voting are not even party members and they cannot be verified. Secondly, most of the people who have to be as party members, they are not financially committed to the party. And therefore, they are under control of certain people who finance the party. So with whatever those people are going to, that's where they go. And most importantly again, it is more a task for INEC. Because look at it like this. Excuse me. I mean we have 50 political parties and they all want to do their primary. Because the new law requires that INEC must provide the primaries for it to be followed. Which means INEC will have to nominate their representatives to all the primaries of the parties across the states. Which means it will be like a mini, mini general election. Which whereby INEC will have to be out-prepared all over the across the world. Let us assume APC is doing its own. INEC will do that. PDP is doing its own. INEC will do that. About 50 parties are doing that. So they will be spending close to times three or times four of what they are spending for elections. What they budget for elections. I totally agree with that. We say we don't have money. That's not even one issue. If it's going to be transparent and it will get results. I would not mind if we spend so much money to get proper people in power. That the issue is that it will not change much. It will not change much. It will not change anything. If Baba Subway will see up their influence. Okay. Let me bring back the IPAC national chairman because we lost him due to some connection issues. Mrs Inzenwa, can you hear me? I think there are a lot of you who are the background from your own side. But can you hear me now? A lot better. But we can just manage this. Okay. Perfect. So you listened to the lawyer and some of the disagreements he has with the new laws, especially the issue of direct primaries. I'm asking, do you agree with him or are you one of those who are in support of the issue of direct primaries? This is your question. I can't really get your question. Okay. I'm going to ask again. There are certain things in the new acts, the bill that is supposed to be assented to by Mr President. And the issue of direct primaries has brought a debate of sorts. And I'm asking what side of the debate you're on. Okay. I'm not getting the full circle of your question. But I think part of the thing that he captured was around direct primaries. Yes. By the political parties. Yes. When this whole thing started with electronic transmission of election results, the Interpartial Advisory Council of Nigeria made it very clear to Nigeria that they should not be over dramatic about the reversal, a reversal of that particular rejection initially by the members of the National Assembly, a specifically the select. Why we say we need not be too joyful about it was because we got our own intel. There's something terrible was going to happen. And that's how to do it. The infarction, the infarction of the direct primaries, which is basically you give one good thing on one hand, you take it with the other hand from the other angle. Now let me be very clear about it. Direct primary is a model that is being inspired by even most advanced democratic society. The American presidential system has currently obtained, does not operate the direct primaries. What they have is a hybrid. A hybrid between direct primary and indirect primary, and they have the collegiate system. Now in the year 2021, if we want to resort back to the antenial democratic model that is being on direct primaries, we'll limit itself reach. That means we're not making progress. Now it's simply unthinkable. Theoretically, it's a fantastic idea, it's a fantastic model. Practically it is impossible. It is humanly impossible. It is also logistic wise impossible. Now apart from this, we need to interrogate the motivation for the now seemingly facing all solutions direct primaries that have been advanced to be the panacea of all our electoral challenges. That is to minimize the quickie rubrics of our political ecosystem. Let us ask our question. If the lawmaker or the national assembly sets out to have a legislation, the intent of that legislation is to address the lacuna within the system. First of all, if you don't intend to address this lacuna, the second thing you are trying to do is also to modify or add greater degree of value to the satisfaction of the greater degree of stakeholders that is within that electoral or political ecosystem. When that is happening, you will now find a significant segment of that stakeholder complaining something is wrong, and so stakeholders are complaining, particularly the political parties. The political parties were not consulted. They were not consulted before this was made as a law in this country, and I say it is on record. The political parties, the body of political parties which I lead in Nigeria was never consulted on this. But the people who agreed on this, permit me please to speak over you, the people who made this impute are members of your political parties. I'm guessing that if they made this decision, they should have called the political parties and liaged with you or had a hearing of sorts to get your two cents into it. Of course, it beats me when you say the parties were not consulted. I'm not still getting the full circle of your question, but I can pick something. You're trying to also reiterate the point I made about the political parties that were not consulted. That's the thing I'm catching from your last statement there. I'm saying on record that the parties were not consulted because we made proposals to the National Assembly, the House of Representatives and the Senators, during the period of the amendment, the impute to the constitution review, as well as the Natural Act amendment bill. There was no time, there was no time, to talk about direct primary and submission to both houses. There was no time we did that. Now, I would took it for granted and would you also maintain that what was already there, which is the optional, the lead party for the political parties to either do direct or indirect, and that was what we worked on and we agree on that. Now, for us to now see direct primary, we see it as an afterthought directed to smoke out the smaller political parties from the political space. And that is why we say after this one we're not consulted. But however, the point I need to make very clearly, if we are going to, if we say clearly that we are out to correct the ills of the direct primary, for instance, if we say we are setting out to correct the ills of the direct primaries. Now, the question we need to ask ourselves is this. Will direct primary eliminate a position of candidate in our electoral system? The answer is no. Will direct primary solve the lingering issue of Godfatherism in our politics? The answer is no. Will direct primary atrophy the rapacious impact of good buying in our electoral system? The answer is no. Will direct primary stop excessive use of money in our electoral system and politics? The answer is no. Will direct primary lead to credible, fair, free, transparent and inclusive and safety-ledding election in Nigeria? The answer is no. Will direct primary sufficiently serve as the motivator to drive the critical mass of the electorate to come out and vote and also particularly in Nigerian politics? The answer is no. Let me go for that. Will direct primary promote the use of technology which INEC has invested heavily in the last few years? The answer is no. Will direct primary enhance efforts to stop or checkmate the transmission of COVID-19, considering the crucial, the social and physical distance that they require? The answer is no with direct primary. It will even make it more worse. The answer is no. Will direct primary stop or minimise high mitigation that has attended both our primary and secondary elections in this country? The answer is no. Will direct primary reduce or minimise the cost of managing elections in our country? The answer is no. So it makes me really wonder why we're pushing or why it was even imputed into the electoral act if it's unachievable because it makes... So it makes you and the lawyer in agreement saying that we're not ripe and we're not ready for direct primaries? Exactly. That's the point we're making. We are not ripe. And if looking at particular examples, looking at particular examples, I can give you three states. I can give you three states for instance. Let's start with the number... Quickly because we need to wrap up. In the Anambra election, we saw one political party, the APC, the total number of votes, but the entire primary was 230,000. That was the result of the primary of the APC primary for governorship in Anambra. Now you have 230. Now what was the entire vote that was cast in Anambra is just a little bit about 230, 249, less than 10 per cent for the total number of votes in Nigeria. You can see the fraud. That thing was written. It was written in the hotel room. And even the APCC coders, the APCC people are not even happy with the result. That is one. Two, I heard the public dimension in a legal seat. Now, we saw what happened during the... the... the... and I will lose the election primary. We saw the number of candidates that came out to... to bring the primary and what happened after the primary. We saw the inconsistency and all that. It was the primary. We saw the acrimony that attended a particular primary. Now we go to Kano. We had a situation in Kano. Why were we going to go on DJ? Who also did the primary in that seat? And we got a phenomenal number that was very scary. The one that got the election, the number that came out to actually vote for the main election was even lower than that. So what... what point is that these are elections that were conducted which was... which was done with direct primary. And we saw the acrimony. We saw the inconsistency. We saw the fraud attended to it. So how can you now begin to tell us that direct primary is what it is? Now, on the other side... We're really running out of time. Unfortunately, we cannot continue with this conversation, but I want to say thank you to you. Lleon Lennart-Zewa is the national chairman of IPAC. Tungi Abdul Amid is a legal practitioner. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Time is not on our side, but we appreciate your thoughts. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me. Thank you very much. All right. Well, thank you all for staying with us. It's been plus politics, but before we go, I would like to give you my take. It's interesting that in 2021 we have been not just bedeviled by COVID-19 and trying to tell people how it's important to get vaccinated to stay safe. We're also now having to tell people to stay safe from getting shot or getting harassed by a police officer, or even being made fun of if you have a family member who was shot at or who was injured or who has been a victim of police brutality. The arm of the lawn is not necessarily long enough to cover us all. The judiciary that is supposed to be the last hope of the common person is also under attack. The police that is supposed to protect and keep us safe in the country were now trying to protect ourselves from them. The government that swore to protect also and serve us seem to be serving themselves. So it makes the average Nigerian really wonder. Where do we go? Who do we call to? Or do we go back to our tents and just wait for Doomsday because it seems to be really close? But then again, there are people who say to us, hold on, 2023 is around the corner, but who are the people that the system is going to throw up? Is it the same people who will come back with the same stories, making the same promises only to one way or the other and slave us and make us leave like those who have no hope? But well, I want to be that person that gives you hope tonight. Don't give up. Keep asking the right questions. Make sure that you don't just get a voter's card. Join a political party today. It's not late. Be part of the decision making. We can no longer sit at ease and hope that God will come down from heaven and help us. Yes, they declared war against us. They declared war on us, so we too have to come ready. Make sure that this does not happen again in 2023 because Nigeria is our country and we cannot be enslaved in our fatherland. I'm Mary Annacol. Thank you for watching.