 Welcome back, it's the Balot 2023 coming to you from PLOS TV, Africa. We are giving you live updates as they happen across various polling units and wards across the country. Now, hoodlums threatened residents in Oshu, the area of Lagos to vote for their candidate who is, who they did not name. These areas are Church Street, Adi and Me Street, Adiwale Crescent. And reports reaching us now indicates that security officials have taken over the polling unit and restored peace. Well, this is not the first that we have heard about violence today. We've even heard that somewhere around, I think, Okota, there's been, yes, a few people have been seeing trying to grab ballot boxes and of course police presence is not so great in those areas. Man, what would have, would have even thought that by now, because in the last elections we had in 2019, that area was like a hot sport. Ballot boxes were snatched. What would have thought that there would be like lots of deployment of security personnel around there? As opposed to what we have in, I think I, when I spoke to some correspondents, we had more police presence on, around the Keta Axis and we also had in Ajegunle, Isola, some parts of Isola. But unfortunately, that Okota, which is, you know, supposed to be a place that should be heavily guarded, wasn't. In fact, at the time we heard that this ballot box attempt, or the attempt to snatch ballot box was happening, there was just one police officer who was unarmed. And this is why I'm, I keep asking about, you know, how, how to protect, you know, polling units, because, you know, Ajegunle will tell you that constitutionally, you know, armed men are not supposed to be around that area a few meters, but then what happened to the few meters away? So it caused a lot of things to question and I must say that we have to have Ainek to answer for this. But then we're being joined by our correspondent, Emmanuel Olubo Wokongi, is giving us, going to be giving us an update from Abu Leba. I hope I got that. Yes, Abu Leba. That's Alina. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us. What's going on in Abu Leba right now? Oh dear, I think we lost it, Emmanuel, the connection. We're trying to reconnect. He will get back to us. So I just want to put it out there that we've had some statistics coming from Kogi State where the serious, you know, insecurity around some parts of Kogi State. We have it on good authority from some situation rooms, yes. We've also found that there's been, I think, somewhere in Lagos, they found a bag full of PVCs and what they, this was at about 10.30 a.m. this morning and what the residents were able to do was to try to pick those PVCs, sort through them and see if they could go to the residents of the people who own those PVCs to see if they could get them out to come vote. A certain place was also reported somewhere on Lagos Island also. After 50 people voted, they said the ballot papers were finished. And so the interesting part is that when INEC officials are being asked questions or the people who are, the electoral officers who are there, they tell you to go to the office to, you know, because they're not allowed to ask questions because they're not allowed to speak to the media on these issues. And so he makes the reporter or whoever is there, you know, the rest of ideas on how to move forward with, you know, the electoral process. Yeah. It is really very sad because one would have thought that by now, with all the education, voter education that has been done on the part of the National Orientation Agency, I negative on some political parties. This can really not talk about national orientation. Why not? It hasn't been anything done by the anyway, but we believe that that's a whole kettle of fish that we'll have to discuss another day. All right. So Bayer is still with us on Zoom, writer. Bayer, let's get your reaction concerning all of these reports that we are getting from Kogay State. And of course, people not being able to vote around some part of the Lagos Island area here in the state. Well, like I said earlier, this shouldn't be happening because we have sufficient experience from adopting elections now to know exactly the kind of behaviour that are often demonstrated by those who do not want the success of opposing certain areas or those who might suspect that their candidates are no strong in certain areas and therefore they want to disrupt voting there. I was expecting that there will be a lot more robust security presence, especially at the flash points and the authorities know those flash points. I think as well that it's important for the commissioner of police in each of the states to be seen, to be visible, to be interfacing, to be monitoring what is going on. I do not know if that process is there. We have mobile units. I don't want to be misunderstood now, not mobile police, but units of police officers who are monitoring the deployment of their officers and therefore can go round. Because if we have that kind of a scenario, then it would be a lot easier to rapidly deploy security forces to trouble spots. I've had some people commenting as well, although I cannot verify that in the Obele Kushi area of Lakey, you know, hoodlums are disrupted voting. You know, sometimes these things you can verify when you put them out. If the authorities themselves are moving rapidly around, if they are mobile, we'll be able to verify some of these things and we'll be able to react immediately. So it's worrisome that we are having this, honestly, because I feel we have sufficient experience conducting elections. We know the key points, we know the vulnerable points and therefore security should have taken all of those factors into consideration in their deployment. But it's very interesting because you see, there was a sudden show of force, you know, earlier in the week before the elections actually happened proper and this somewhat, for those who were, you know, excited to be part of the elections, was some form of, you know, it doused the fear that people had for voters. But then, looking at what has happened today, it looked like these people were drafted to one particular place and then every other place was left naked. And just as you've said, we have had, you know, a series of electoral cycles that we could have learned from. But every year, I feel like this is almost a deja vu. Why haven't we learned from these experiences to make sure, especially for an election like this, that we were hoping would change the course of things for the country? Yeah, it beats me to be honest, you know. If we go back to 1999 and 2007 elections, we saw the military at key points. They were basically, they set up check points at key points, okay, and then the police was freed to actually participate, to supervise election in polling units. So if anyone is going to cause trouble, a group of people are going to cause trouble. They have to move from place to place. And that would be very difficult if you have the military man in checkpoints in those localities, right? But okay, I really don't know whether that has been done now, because otherwise I don't say how you want to check who belongs from movie from point A to point B, except you had those kinds of checkpoints. I haven't seen a helicopter in the sky today. Normally when we have it, maybe I'm wrong, or maybe there are some other parts of Lagos, some other parts of the country. But normally when you have elections, you also have the helicopters in the sky providing what is called over the horizons of evidence and providing real-time information to those on the ground so that they could easily deploy. They're always in radio contact, but I have not had a single helicopter in the sky today. Maybe I missed it, but so I'm becoming a bit more worried now with all these reports coming in, and of course with the feedback we're getting. But the consolation is that so far, these have just been a few places, compared to the larger electoral mapping of voters and police stations that we have. So let us hope that the authorities can swiftly deploy and counter all of this because there's still quite a number of good hours left for voting to take place. From the look of things again, we've seen that INEC officials have not showed up early. I mean, as at 11.40 a.m., certain places are yet to see election officials. And so this means that what the INEC chairman had told us earlier, that election starts at 8.30 and ends at 2.30, might not necessarily be the case. I'm going somewhere. If these elections are pushed further, that means that we might get late into the evening. And if we're already seeing these pockets of violence, where we hear that certain hoodlums are taking over certain polling units and telling you who to vote for, who's to say that we can protect the rest of the electorates who are out there who still really want to cast their votes? Good question. Good question. The first thing is, if you look at the elections we've had over the years, we always have situations where elections go late into the evening. You know, sometimes the bad elections take place the following day, where they couldn't take place, you know, as designated on polling day itself. Now, one is hoping that we don't get into that, right? Additionally, one is also hoping that we don't get into a situation where people have to come and vote late into the night. You know, especially like, but I still maintain from the reports, thankfully, still a few isolated places. And I believe that the security forces can still deal with this problem now. But if it's not dealt with, and if people still have an affair, that they might be attacked, people will not want to wait and vote. If elections continue to, you know, dovetail into dusk, people are not going to want to be there because their safety to them will not be guaranteed. This is why it's important for security forces to do something urgently. Having said that, I feel we should, like I said, we shouldn't be doing, we shouldn't be having this, you know, cycle, you know, where materials will not arrive on time or electoral officials will arrive late. Somebody I was discussing with a couple of days ago told me that INEC, only once in his book, where he wasn't called INEC at the time, was called FEDECO, for the Federal Electoral Commission, okay? Which at the time was headed by Justice Ovia Whiskey. The only time we knew the electoral body to actually buy its own vehicles for the distribution of electoral materials was when Justice Ovia Whiskey was chairperson of FEDECO and they bought their vehicles and they used those vehicles to conduct elections. Of course, it's expensive to do that now because you are going to need those vehicles only for the election. And then after the election, what happens? So maybe electoral body decided not to do that anymore. But we keep seeing these logistical handicaps, not moving the materials to key areas because that is done. They get the support of the Air Force and so on to move them. But on pulling the itself, we still keep getting these reports year in, year out, when we have elections, that elections are not starting early somewhere. I think we should have grown beyond this now. Baira, the thing is that these elections take place every four years and indeed after each elections, INEC is aware of all of the issues, where there were really serious attacks and hotspots and all of that. One would have thought that with the liaisons that INEC has with the security agencies, the Inspector General of Police, the NSCDC officials, one would have thought that these areas that are really prone to violence would have been given more attention as elections go by. And you talked about logistics and INEC having to get its own vehicles and transport to convey this material. So elections don't start on time. Is it like INEC does not really do its own homework to know the things they actually do need so that we'll not be talking about these little issues every order year when we have elections? Yeah, I mean, the question of whether they should actually have their own vehicles, I think it's something to be interrogated after these elections. Because like I said, it was only the Federal Electoral Commission for their phone that just to be risky that did that. Now, why they stopped, I don't know, it's just conjecture and speculation. But having said that, we honestly shouldn't be having these issues. You see, when we talk of having adequate number of police officers, people tend to overlook it until we have elections like this. Thankfully, and I still maintain from the reports coming in, these incidents are still isolated. If you look at the fact that we have over 100 and I think 179,000 police units. So if you look at that, these are still isolated, but notwithstanding the fact that they're isolated, they can discourage other people, or discourage people in other places from actually remaining on the queue and wanting to vote, because they will not know if they are going to be attacked. And this is why we shouldn't be going through this. For me, we have to revisit. It's too late now because we are already in the elections. We have to revisit the number and the size of the police officers we have in the country. Well, remember, Justin, I said at the top of the segment of the program that we would need over 170,000 times two police officers to be able to keep two police officers in each polling booth across the country. Do we have that? I don't know. And then if we, some say, okay, we compliment that with civil defense. Civil defense is not exactly police. And yes, they can assist, but they're not police officers. So these are issues we have to deal with going forward. I think for now, the saving grace is we only have these things in isolated places. And let us hope they all spread. And this is why those in charge who are watching us who are listening to us have the responsibility to rapidly deploy to these trouble spots and not just that to take proactive measures to ensure that in all those areas that are peaceful, which are still in the majority, by the way, things don't go wrong there as well. Baya, let's come back to talking about security. I'm looking right now at the approved budgets for a few election cycles. Now, security budget for 2015 was 969 billion Naira. In 2016, it was 1.06 trillion Naira. In 2017, it was 1.14 trillion Naira. In 2018, it was 1.35 trillion Naira. In 2019, it was 1.76 trillion Naira. Let me fast forward to 2021. We had 1.97 trillion Naira. As we speak, the election, the security budget I beg your pardon, is 2.72 trillion Naira in 2023. I think I want to join the rest of the people who are asking questions, journalists, activists, researchers, where does the money go? Looking also at the chat for violence in Nigeria, especially before the elections, surprisingly, I'd like to put it to you that Southeast is topping that list. The Northeast and the North Central are actually at two and three percent compared to what's happened in the Southeast. So again, should we be looking at our state governors as opposed to just talking to the federal government because these are the people who are responsible directly to us, why is this festering, especially now that we are in the midst of a very serious and a very big election? Very good point, very good point. The statistics you gave give us a graphic idea of the progression in the requirement in terms of security for elections, which are also related to the great number of voters, which would translate into the great number of electoral materials that have to be produced and so on and so forth. But I want to look at it from maybe two or three points. One, the way we conduct elections itself puts a lot of pressure on resources. For example, why should we register voters just a couple of months before elections happen? Why can't people just go and register when they turn on the team? Because now, for instance, we have a cut-off period. People who have registered for 2023 elections, why can't it be that after these elections, from when you turn 18, walk into the nearest Population Commission office or the nearest INEA office, register and pick up your PBC. Why must you wait for the next election coming up in four years time? You get it. If you can do this, it reduces the pressure on having to hire ad-hoc staff and hire everybody to conduct registration of voters. And I think that would take away a sizable chunk of the cost of elections. The second thing is the printing of electoral materials. Do we have sufficient confidence in our own domestic printing facilities to print sensitive electoral materials? And are we going to keep printing sensitive electoral materials? I don't know where they were printed by the way. So this I am just assuming. If we have to be printing abroad, it's going to cost us a lot more money. And that may also have to do with the exchange rate of the Naira. If we can print locally, which I think we can, we just need to make sure the security printing and meeting company is properly equipped and not an un-facilitator. It would also reduce the cost. So bottom line, we need to look critically at taking proactive measures to reduce the cost of elections. Now in terms of security, yes, I agree with you. The state governors can do a lot. Sometimes state governors just don't do anything and lay all the blame at the level of the federal government. But they are the chief security officers of the state. And it's not every measure that you deploy to guarantee security that necessarily requires money. Some of it is just attitude orientation and engagement. So all of these things have to be really tracked and looked at. But now that we are in an election, if we want to begin to deal with a problem in situ, it's pretty difficult because we do respect. The state governors, they are invested interest in elections. So once they are invested, or they have invested interest in elections, it becomes difficult to rely on them to do anything, you know, seriously speaking, within the course of those elections. And that's why I think the IG, we deployed some commissioners of police in some states and they did a couple of shopping around. But we need to begin to see this shopping that was done pay off now. The police and the security agencies need to get on the road and arrest whatever kind of problems that emanated from the ongoing process. I know that you're not speaking for the federal government, neither are you speaking for the police or anything. But because we're having this ban time, I'm going to put this question across. We have a population that's 200 plus million. And you already know the percentage of police to every 500 Nigerians. It's despicable. Again, going back to the Southeast, which is topping the list of violence, sometime in the middle of last year, if I'm not mistaken, Southeast governors came together saying that they were going to address the issue of terrorism and violence in their region. And you made mention of the fact that they might be vested interest, but then we see that it's a mixed pudding. Most of them are not all part of the same political party. So what would be the interest that would keep these people from dealing with the killings in their area, especially for the likes of Emol State, Eboni and Anambara State, where we've seen even a sitting senator being attacked? Is it, I mean, I would say that right after that event, which was a Tea Party, we've not heard anything about it. Is it that we, the people ourselves, are not holding these guys responsible enough and we're always pointing to the federal government? Maybe that's why that silence has been there for that long. No, definitely, yes, I agree. For most things in the country, we often just call the president. You know, if they drain in front of my house, it's not flowing during the rainy season. Usually in Algerians, you say, what is the president doing? They drain in front of my house, it's not flowing. But when I say that states can do something, and I really mean that they can do something, but the moment elections approach, if they do not take proactive measures before elections and elections now approach, they are already invested party in those elections as it might be difficult to do anything. If you, for example, take Lagos State, now you have the Lagos State Security Trust Fund, we know the impact of that Lagos State Security Trust Fund on, especially when Governor Faschella was Governor Lagos and when the Security Trust Fund began and we knew how that approach by the Lagos State on that Faschella significantly reduced crime in Lagos. So that's a kind of example I'm referring to when I say that state governors can do something. It's not all the time that they have to always make reference to the federal government. And in any case, they know the terrain better. So let's hope that we all can take lessons from what is happening and let us hope that we don't record any serious injuries from what the incidents have been reported already. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.