 The need for electoral college in Nigeria. At Independence, Nigeria held great optimism. Political commentaries across the globe testified to inevitable emergence of a strong nation to lead Africa out of the dungeon, occasioned by colonialism. It was an easy prediction. All indicators of a prosperous nation were available. Natural resources, the human resources, the capital resources were not lacking. We could not boast of an array of ideological political leaders across board. However, 60 years after independence, it was seen that the predictions were wrong. The country had a fruitful first republic and has ceased to progress. It has become saddled with the constant threat of insecurity, a weakened security system. Worse, it became the poverty capital of the world. It is obvious that Nigeria has a leadership crisis inherent in her political system. The rule of leadership cannot be oversized. It's leadership that directs, initiates, and combines other resources into meaningful development. The absence of it, as it is in Nigeria, is a state of continuous underdevelopment. Therefore, it becomes a necessity for a new ideology to educate, enlighten, and encourage political participation. The Electoral College of Nigeria fails to void and the need with its mandate to usher in a new Nigeria. The Electoral College of Nigeria is a civil service organization that was set up by individuals first in practical politics and governance. The Electoral College of Nigeria is non-partisan, non-governmental, and is an initiative of the Emerging Leaders Advancement Forum. That's a branch out of young Nigerians who span from politics, patriotism, development professionals to everyday Nigerians born void of an ideological democracy in Nigeria. The college's objective is to improve politicity within the electorate by providing civic education to the electorate. Provide training for party delegates and aspiring candidates to champion the cause for electoral reforms and constitutional amendments. In less than a year, the college has been part of student leadership summits in universities across Nigeria. It has also promoted actual electoral etiquette and processes in the election school of leadership in primary schools and secondary schools across Nigeria. Under the stewardship of its Executive Director, the college has continued to educate Nigerians during the COVID-19 pandemic, launching its online virtual class on Politracy and Governments for aspiring candidates and the electorate. The Executive Director has reiterated on many occasions that Nigerians with its high level of intellect are poor in political literacy. He stated that the key to this is understanding political offices, functions, jurisdictions as provided by the Constitution. The college also understands that the quality of debates for political office don't necessarily show the electorate, the jurisdiction of the office sought. It's noted this is a key tool to candidate selection and also the college held the Lagos East by Election Senatorial Debate. In which candidates were asked questions within jurisdiction of office, helping the electorate make informed decisions and choices. Understanding the ongoings of the political terrain in Nigeria. What's most key is political literacy for the electorate to select individuals appropriate for office. To also help delegates with candidate selections and candidates in political office to understand jurisdictions of the office they serve in. Hence the advocacy and work with the Electoral College in Nigeria. So my question is how do we all get involved in the Electoral College? I need to be a student there because everything you just said, I need to learn. Yeah, there's so much to learn, particularly looking at the line up of what you really stand for and what you want to achieve as an Electoral College. Where do we start from? Who has the right to be a member? No, it's actually a college that is built for everybody in Nigeria. We organise, of course, virtual and physical classes so anybody can sign up. We just finished our fourth cohort and looking at it, of course, we expect to educate every Nigerian but that's a big task. So we've reduced the task to about one billion Nigerians for 2023. Fantastic. We hope that works because we need the information. It's not in the mainstream educational curriculum anyway so we might as well. I think growing up there was this course we did or the subject we did in primary secondary school which is called Government. At the point you were sticking out of the syllabus. Really? Yeah, at the point. Now what that did for us then was that it gave you a little history about what happens, what you're learning, where you're coming from as a people and that also lets you know the rights and the strengths you have as a voter. Right now, the reason I really buy into that electoral college stuff, not just like the American one, but the reason I buy into it for Nigeria is that I believe that a lot of people need to be sensitised. We need orientation and reorientation. A lot of people have understood how the system worked back then. They've forgotten how it works. A lot of people have forgotten what it even means to vote, how to vote. A lot of people don't even know how to vet their candidates. And most importantly, one thing I wish this electoral college would do is to say we focus too much on the presidency. The focus is not the president. It's the senators, the parliamentarians, the state government, the local government, chairmen. I'm sure all of that's important. No, like we run it. We run it. There are 22 modules in the course known as Politresi 101. So there are 22 modules. It takes you, it walks through the local government, the legislative houses, you know, down to the local government. It also goes to post elections, which is result coalition and other points, you know, issues with judicial mishaps when it comes to debating points. And we go all through the entire system of politics and governance. You know, we might not have good examples in Nigeria, but of course we try to create out of what which exists. So we teach what already is, what should be, which is by the constitution. Then we will tell you what is and we'll tell you what the problem in between the two are. And that's how we sort of believe you with a clear picture of how it should be. We go as far as even teaching our students, manifestos and campaign messaging. Now this is not for them to run for office. If you choose to run for office, it's beautiful. But so that the electorate should understand what to expect. So when a legislator comes to you and says, I'm going to give you light, I'm going to give you road, you already know it's not possible. It's not within his or her view. Well, her view. You know, we have to be delicate. He's her person. So it's not within his or her view. And we also get to the point that we try to make clear that governance, I think we preach the most. Governance does not have any gender. Meaning there's no position that a man or woman cannot achieve. Governance is deliverables. It's not based on. We also do something funny within our class system, which I know she would love. We do not take in a class if we do not have at least 49% female participation. It's something we don't do. We've pulled that across time. And I would say also, even within the structure of the Electoral College in Nigeria, we have volunteers across the structure. I'll tell you, women make up at least 73% of its position and our positions. We even don't, I remember a funny thing that happened. We were to hold a meeting to prepare for the fourth cohort on Vars Day, and the women are like, no, Pekat attend. And they have to send it to the needs of humans. Human face. So we try to work within that, and we also understand that in Africa, if you bring the women into political participation, you're not only bringing a woman in, you're bringing another generation. We have understood that within the Electoral College, and we've seen the rise of women that have been our students. Our KPIs are massive. We have a situation of, I think, within the second cohort, and someone decided he was going to run for office, but this time within a professional capacity. And I remember it was Asaba. He was the NBA chairman of Asaba, and they've never had somebody under 50. And this guy was under 40, and we taught him some things, funny theories. We have a Minority X theory, which means you can go against the system of viewing this, how you go about it. And he used that, and he wrote a review for the college. So it's good to see that the chairman of NBA, Asaba, is a student. And this is not only for political positions, as we term it. Even professional positions, running new associations, we've also been able to affect people's directions. If we provide our own power and our water, and every other mini-termite as well, provide our own education. They are private schools. So this is just one specialist school that we need. And I wish it could be mainstream. Maybe we'll get there. Like you said, you've partnered with... Yeah, we're partnering. Yeah, we partner with multiple institutions. We're trying to deliver this. We've gone as far as even initiating partnership with the Kadna Business School. We're trying to bring governance into every faucet, excuse me, of life in Nigeria. So we've also tried with international partners. Of course, we have a few. And we're expanding at the rate we can. We don't have any grants yet, so we're funded internally. But you know, when they say who is bankrolling, there's just a lot of people that really, really love the country and believe in the system. And we've tried to open up partnerships, and we'll keep trying to... I think likely, when you said you opened up a partnership from the outside, my major concern was, which is one of the challenges we've had with politics in our part of the world, is that we often import strange methodologies and approaches from the outside. But I mean, you know, because let's take, for example, you know, if I'm suffering from... If I have a typhoid and you have a malaria and I attempt to use your cure for typhoid, I would only aggravate my issues because I wouldn't get healed. And that's what we do a lot of times. The West is far ahead. There are so many things. We have a structure. We don't have a structure. So if we try to directly import whatever is done abroad into our system, it might not work because you don't have a structure that will support it. So most of the things we should do is what you're doing now, which is whatever you're doing now is get at building a structure. Homegrown. Yeah, homegrown. Letting people identify what they need. Because if, for example, now, I mean, you're starting this abroad and you're telling them, okay, this is where you need to vote. Hey, I know how to vote. I know the structure. I know what to do. But most importantly is that what you said about it, not just being political office holders but even professionals, because if you can groom people to be thinkers individually, it's easier to migrate into politics. As against just grooming them for politics, you haven't applied all the theories they've learned at all. But if you're a secondary school, you invest in students and you venture into, we post in your school or something, and from there you grow and you see how the system works, you can grow to become a better politician because politicians are like doctors. You don't become a doctor when you get into the hospital. You become a doctor then you are admitted into the hospital. I can't just walk into the hospital and say, okay, I want to, I aspire to be a doctor and I want to start, you know, okay, I'll call you doctor and start the process. No, you go to school, you graduate, you have the degree and you're called a doctor then a hospital takes you over. And I think that's the way politics is. Your mind must be prepared. Your mind must be prepared so that when you're going in there, you're going in there with the idea of deliverables, what to do for the people, what you want to achieve. I mean, just working immediately. As against getting there, then you say, okay, how does the system work? And you tell your guy, you need to do this and you say, okay, let's do that. And the system gets messed up. Oh, madam, right? Yeah, I'm your guy, madam. The electoral college, you know, we are non-partisan. We've also trained within intra-party, on an intra-party base. So we work with what is APC, PDP, STP and we understand the truth about things. And that is because we clearly understand that no party is bad. It's the players within a party that is bad. Like I always give an example and I'm sorry I'm going to say this on air because it's going to be painful and a lot of people are going to laugh. But I'm an Arsenal fan, but that does not mean I hate football. Why are you guys laughing? You see what I said? I know. So I'm an Arsenal fan. I'm an Arsenal fan. And no matter how many times Arsenal loses, it's sad to say, loses some games, I still don't hate football. But what we've done with politics is that in Nigeria is that we hate politics because of the players and you can't hate politics because of the players. It doesn't make it a bad game. So if you bring in new players, that's what we are trying to do or you try to improve the game within the system. Like I forgot which party we were training and we were going over delegates and delegates were saying they didn't know they were not supposed to collect money. I don't want to mention it. But it's alright. They didn't know they were not supposed to... They didn't know. They didn't know. Education. Teaching. The gap that the Electoral College is trying to bridge. Okay. Joyce is next after this break. Don't go anywhere.