 Nigeria held its presidential and national assembly elections on Saturday, February 25, 2023, across all the 36 states of the Federation and the federal capital territory. It was the most competitive election since the country's return to democratic rule in 1999, the 7th in the circle. Nigerians now have a president-elect in the person of Senator Bola Agnetinobu, the candidate of the All Progressive Congress APC, with the lowest margin of victory in contemporary Nigerian history. However, the general impression among Nigerians, with the sole exception of the supporters of the ruling party now declared elected, is that Nigeria's electoral commission simply keyed into the president-elect's emiloco message, which is, it is my turn. Whereas the technological innovation in form of the bimodal voter accreditation system, BEVAS, for short, and IREV, the INEC Results Reporting Portal was supposed to ensure transparency and accountability in form of real-time loading of results from polling units on Election Day, the same BEVAS process as provided for in Section 60 of the Electoral Act and clause 38 of INEC's own guidelines failed on Election Day. To be specific, it worked seamlessly for the National Assembly elections, but failed to upload the presidential elections. This has led to a series of protests and legal battles in a bid to overturn their announcement. Well, joining us live to discuss peace and conflict resolution in the aftermath of elections is Professor Darren Kew, Executive Director, UMA's Boston Center for Peace, Democracy and Development. He was an international observer in the just concluded presidential elections and was in a quiet bomb state. Thank you for joining us, Darren. Thank you so much for having me. Well, 24 years into our newfound democracy, as I might call it, one would expect more peaceful elections in Nigeria. But this is not really the case. Either in Nigeria, the supposed giant of Africa, and many other countries on the black continent. But perhaps we do not look at the signs early enough, or we do not know them enough to take them, and now we take them for granted. That's me just trying to speculate why we have conflicts in the first place. What in your experience should countries be looking out for before, during and after elections to prevent conflicts from happening in the first place? Well, conflict prevention regarding elections has a lot to do with perception. Perception is reality in politics and in conflict as well. And as you mentioned rightly so, this election in particular raised a tremendous amount of expectation because of the electronic voting machinery that INEC was using. Consequently, I think prevention of conflict in this case, especially in this moment, still hinges a lot on what INEC does, particularly with this BVAS data. I think there's a lot of expectation that that data is going to show some difference between what we were seeing at the polling units on the ground and what the correlated numbers released by INEC last week were. And if there is a discrepancy, the law says very clearly that the BVAS data should win the day. And so this is then going to shift a lot of the interest of the court material as it's happening right now. So I think preventing conflict is going to have a lot to do with INEC being more transparent about how it is handling this material. What is it going to do when it tries to wipe the BVAS machines in preparation for the gubernatorial elections? It's promising to have all that backup data available. I think INEC is going to need to be much more transparent than it has been so far in this process. I think a lot of the conflict and violence that we've seen so far was a result in part because INEC was not especially transparent about this data over recent days. I think if INEC had been a little bit more straightforward about what was happening, a lot could have been prevented. Another key piece of conflict prevention here, of course, is going to be the body language and the statements of the candidates themselves, especially the presidential candidates. And I think especially Peter Obi and Abu Bakr Artiku, I think both of them so far seem to have been sending a message of peaceful questioning of the results and taking their cases to court. I think as long as they continue down that path, that will be very important towards preventing election conflict from escalating. I'm more worried at the moment about the gubernatorial elections. We saw all across the Federation a tremendous amount of concern in the weeks prior to the forthcoming gubernatorial election that those elections are going to be far more hotly contested on the ground, particularly between the APC and the PDP. And those two parties in particular and the candidates on both sides and obviously, of course, the other parties involved, the Labor Party and the NNPP, both need to or all of these need to certainly rein in their supporters and make sure that these elections are as peaceful as possible. Okay, before the elections, all the parties and especially the candidates, the presidential candidate signed what is known as a peace accord. What other things can be done before elections to also help the peace accord, if that is a good option anyway, to make sure that the election continues to be peaceful. And after the elections, the peace that we are supposed to enjoy continues as well. Yes, I mean, I think the peace accord was certainly an important precursor prior to the elections in terms of getting a pledge from key candidates to make sure that they promise to show good behavior. But I think the political parties themselves need to go far, far deeper in terms of internal reforms. First and foremost, in terms of their primary processes, we saw all sorts of problems around the federation and the political primaries in terms of how those were held and how those certainly created a tremendous amount of frustrations among candidates and supporters who were unable to see their preferences reflected in the outcomes. Second is that the parties themselves need to undertake important reforms where financing, bribery, these sorts of things need to be, these approaches need to be reined in, but also the use of political muscle, the use of private militias, the use of thugs, this sort of thing is widespread across the federation. And more efforts need to be done to try to rein those in. And this is something where both the federal and the state governments have to play a very strong role in trying to rein in the use of these militias. But that, of course, is a much wider issue that goes far beyond the elections themselves. What are some of the lessons, apart from the ones that you have mentioned, that we should learn from the previous election, the last election, I beg your pardon? Well, I think to begin again on the electronic voting machinery, I think that there's a lot that needs to be done in terms of trying to improve those. I think we certainly saw, for instance, that the voter accreditation process was improved dramatically by the use of the BVAS machines and the biometric cards. Both of these helped quite a bit on the ground. But then at the end of the day, when it came to uploading those results, clearly the BVAS machine had trouble, particularly with the presidential results. I think that there's a lot that can be done to try to improve that. And again, I think INEC understandably tries to hold its cards close to its chest because the political parties are doing all that they can to try to influence the way the elections turn out. But I think INEC could still be more transparent. It could have been more transparent about who was the vendor that they used to get the BVAS machines? How was the vendor chosen? And then they could have also tested those machines much more thoroughly. INEC was saying that the bi-elections in Oshun and Akiti were essentially test runs. And then it did some pilot test runs in the 36 states in key locales. But it did not do a comprehensive test run across the 176,000 polling units prior to election day. And consequently, we saw massive problems with the technology across the Federation. And I think INEC could do much more in terms of testing that. Second, I think, as we were saying earlier, the political parties and the reform of the political parties going all the way down to the primary process needs greater attention by both the electoral law and by regulators. OK. Well, I'm just curious. A lot of people have said the voting system in America, for instance, is a bit different. We don't have to halt every business, everything in our economy to make sure that we go out to vote. Do you see from your experience, you said you've been coming to Nigeria from the early 90s, in your experience, do you think there are things that we can ever get to that stage where we vote without even thinking about the fact that we are voting and halting everything else and where we can also have diaspora voting. We can also have the votings that come through the post and so many other things that you do. What are the steps that we need to put in place before we can reach there, if you believe, that we can ever reach that point? Oh, absolutely. Nigeria is at that point right now where it could do all of the things that you just mentioned. First and foremost, there's no reason why the state and federal elections need to be staggered across different days. INEC could use a comprehensive ballot or it could use several different ballots. I don't think it would be any more confusing to voters than it already is right now. And in fact, I think voters would appreciate getting the whole thing done over and done with. The only reason the elections are staggered is for political reasons and for political power considerations. Second is that the technology is already there to be able to manage all of this. Just as we saw BVAS uploading the Senate, the House and the presidential on that afternoon, it could also upload the gubernatorial, the state assembly and the local government results for that matter could all be held on the same day. In terms of closing Nigeria down for a day in order to hold the elections, I do think for the short term, precisely because elections are still so hotly contested and violence and other concerns are such an ever-present danger. I think certainly it makes sense taking a Saturday and closing things down for a day so that maximal integrity of the voting process and maximal safety for Nigerian voters can be assured makes sense at least for several more election cycles until the political parties themselves and the politicians so much better behavior than we've seen so far. But I think for sure that collapsing all the elections into one election day makes absolute sense. I also think that INEC can absolutely run political party primaries in a single day so that those can be improved in terms of those qualities. And as you said, there's absolutely room for diaspora voting now. There are multiple ways that this could be handled in ways that can retain the confidence of the Nigerian public that they were done properly. Okay, well, all we've been saying is what can be, what could have been, and you know, but now we have reached that point where we always get to that point where there is litigation and so much tension in the politics just after election. How best can we resolve these conflicts arising from elections as we have, the election misunderstandings that we have? Yeah, I think you've hit the nail on the head that the next step really is with the courts is all eyes are gonna be turning to the tribunal processes and the Supreme Court eventually in terms of the presidential election. And as we know, the Nigerian judicial system has a lot of problems and does not have the confidence of many Nigerians in terms of the integrity of the court process. So I think the courts need to step up and ensure, first of all, transparency on their part. But second, to make decisions that are in line with the election evidence. And I think first and foremost, the courts have to look closely at the BVAS data and say, okay, what were the real numbers that we were seeing on the ground? And the National Assembly passed the law which says that those BVAS sheets that are on the electronic images that are available on the website have to be looked at closely. The numbers have to be tallied and a decision has to be made. And honestly, I think that the courts themselves should look at this data and should tally their own numbers that they can check against what the political parties are gonna tally and what INIC itself has put up there and let them make a decision in front of Nigerians so that every Nigerian can look at it and can say, yes, we agree or disagree with the outcome of that court decision, but we think the court made the best decision it could based on the evidence. Rather than turning to some sort of technicality as the courts typically have or often have in many decisions, which simply say to many Nigerians, look, the court is looking for a way out in order to bow its head to one particular power holder or another. And I think that sort of outcome would be particularly problematic for this. And then let me just say, lastly too, I think that the ball is also in the court of the opposition here. And I would say, in particular for Peter Obey, I think he is a person who looks at things over the long haul and I hope he will look at it that way this time is that he in particular seemed to have generated a tremendous amount of energy in parts of the Federation. I think he needs to think about how am I gonna transform what he won on the election day this year in 2023 and say, how can I transform this into a broader movement that is looking at 2027? Not only for his own seat in the presidency, but for the opposition itself. At this point, I don't think we have the final results for the House of Representatives. It looks like it's possible that the opposition together collectively might have the majority in that House. If the opposition can come together as United Front and can use the powers of the Assembly and the Constitution to keep a check and balance on the Tanubu presidency, if that's what the courts end up deciding. This could be a very important four years for Nigerian democracy in which the opposition begins to play the respectful opposition role that it needs to play and holds the APC feet to the fire and says, look, deliver us some serious development. Deliver us some serious economic policies and ultimately deliver us even better elections in 2027. Okay, another concern I have is no matter how we look at it, the people also have a very great role to play because even the political actors come from the people. How best can we then get the people to key into the alternative conflict resolution strategies? And who should champion this? Absolutely, I think, you know, and when I look at this election, even though as someone who has, I have observed every election in the fourth republic and a couple of elections even previous to the fourth republic. And from the long-term view, definitely the 2023 election is much, much better than elections we saw 10, 15 years ago in many ways. But for a lot of young people in Nigeria, who were trying to vote for the first time, I'm sure many of them are looking at this election and throwing up their hands and saying, you know, it's useless for me to vote and nothing's going to change. And I think that civil society groups in particular and the politicians, as I mentioned, Peter Obi, but I think Abu Bakr Artiku and others need to say to voters across Nigeria, but to young voters in particular, look, you made a difference this time even though you don't realize it. So a message from political leaders needs to be saying, look, stay engaged in a peaceful but intense fashion to continue to hold your leaders to the fire, feet to the fire for political change. And I think civil society is gonna be a critically important actor in the years to come to continue to work with voters and to provide alternatives and to continue to push the politicians forward. And in terms of civil society, I wanna underscore the role of religious institutions in this. I think the churches and the mosques have a really important role to continue to press for integrity in politics and clean elections. And this is something that I think the churches and the mosques have a number of vehicles that they can come together through. I'm thinking of the inter-religious commission in Nigeria and other ecumenical vehicles to try to continue to say, look, it's not our place to say who should win elections but it is our place to say that should be clean elections. And I think that that's something that civil society can play a really important role. Will we be over stretching it if we start something in schools? What about the school education system? What role do they have to play? Because we're looking at not just the election but getting people to be patriotic to their country because everything stems from there. Will it be, you know, will we be over reaching if something is done about that from the school system? Absolutely, I mean, I think education in the schools is certainly an important starting point. And honestly, as we all say, politics begins in the family. This is something that happens at home. And I think parental and educational roles are really important. But again, the government has to meet people halfway. The government has to provide the socioeconomic goods that people need in order for people to say, okay, look, it's worth my time to listen to all these good values that I'm getting in school. And so we need to see a serious anti-corruption initiative out of the government. We need to see cleaner elections going forward and we need to see public policies that actually deliver jobs, health and good education to Nigerians. The more that governments are able to provide that, then I think the average Nigerian can say, yeah, these ethics make sense. So, you know, government's got to hold up its end of the social contract. And so far, the Nigerian government has not been holding up its end. So Nigerians, I think very understandably and logically are saying, yeah, these are good values, but, you know, I need to take care of myself. And we need to see a change from the top as well as from the bottom with this, if we're going to see things move forward. I'd like to thank you very much, Professor Kew, for coming on the program and, you know, helping us to see the gray areas that we are having. And we hope that some of these things will be done and we'll have a better election. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you so much for inviting me up. Yeah, okay. Well, we thank you for staying with us. We take a quick break now and when we return, we'll be discussing the appeal court refusing Peter Obe's request to scan election materials. Stay with us.