 All right, welcome back. It's still the breakfast ballot 2023 special right here on plus TV Africa. I'm still here. My name is Kofi Bartels alongside message book. We're still here as well. And we have been very interesting conversations about the election 2023 election and of course the unfolding events. Counting is still ongoing. Some states have been completed in terms of the results being returned to the National Collegian Center. Some states are still on and the remainder votes are expected today. And I'm sure that by the end of today, we should know who the next president of the federal Republic of Nigeria is. And we would like to also introduce our next guest to talk about, you know, the alleged inconsistencies in the number of voting votes and allegations of overvoting in a key state and also to talk about generally, some of the complaints regarding the general election. We have a studio guest in studio. Like to say a very good morning. I think he's really on zoom from the beautiful Asian country of Singapore. But he is here with us in the studio this morning. Dr. Moshala Deji is a political scientist. Dr. Deji, good morning to you. Good morning. It's good to have you back here. I'm sure you came because of the elections. And I would like to take your thought and compare it to what's happened around the world. Places that you've observed. Still with us via zoom, we have the coordinator of the people's advocate, the civil society organization, the fights for the rights of people. He was also an election observer with the transition monitoring group. Courage in Syri Movoo Esquire, legal practitioner. Courage, just to confirm you're still there with us. Thank you, Kofi. I'm still here. Okay. Fantastic. Dr. Moshala Deji, your thoughts, your observation as a returnee on what transpired on Saturday? Well, I think the Saturday election against questions, our ability to do things right. There's an improvement from the past election, because in 2011, 2015 and 2019, INEC, for one reason or the other, postponed the election. Many citizens were kind of like apprehensive that maybe that is going to occur again. INEC got that right by not postponing the election. Everything was kind of going smoothly, especially in the metropolis and the constituencies of the leading candidate. We can see in Adamawa, in Lagos, the constituencies close to that of the leading presidential candidate, the process started early. But that is not the case across the country. Now, the election, as it went, there is an improvement within the introduction of BIVAS. So I would say that INEC started well. But at the middle of the game, things began to go wrong. And most especially failure to upload the result as promised by INEC for citizens to be seeing the result real time. That has reduced confidence in the process itself. So I think that INEC started well. But at the middle of the game, things went wrong and it's not ending gloriously for INEC. But can the electoral empire really be blamed in all of what's happening, especially if you look at some of the challenges with technology, network failure, network challenges, can the electoral empire be blamed? It's beyond them if the network is not working and results cannot be uploaded to the portal. And their fail-saves, the regulations and guidelines for the call-out of election, allows them to result to using the copies of the result sheets and the forms which contain the voting tally. Well, I think it has more to do with the will of women to make things work. Technology, you can't speak to someone automatically on your phone. You have to take it. You have to dial a number or even if you're going to use a voice prompt or something. Now, if human beings do not want to make it work, it won't work. That's what I see in this case because even if there are some technical issues or the other, those technical issues could be fixed within a short period of time. This is an election whereby, unlike what we've seen in Nigeria before, that the major candidate will be from the ethnic tripods on which Nigeria stands. In such a situation, transparency is important. This is an election that involves, largely, the youth that the youth are passionate about. So, based on that, you have to be 100 percent transparent as much as you can. But if you are saying, oh, technology and all that, then I think the system, just like our phone, if there's no good internet network on my phone, if I send the WhatsApp message to you, over time it will still deliver. So, I blame it more on the will of human beings to do what is right rather than on the technology itself, even if you bring the best technology. Even if you bring a super human being, if they don't want it to work, it won't work. That's the problem. It's an institutional thing. It's a system thing in the sense that those that profit from it, for example, politics is very lucrative here. And why would a politician not go all out to make sure that he or she wins? He has everything to gain out of his wins. Nigeria is a power-driven society. So, technology or anything that's bound to be compromised, except if the umpire himself is willing and committed to make his work, there should be like other substitute engineers, for example, in the sense that if you don't put all your heads in one basket, knowing that this is a crucial election. So, for me, I think INEC has not, has not, has not done the right thing. Not because it is not capable to, but because INEC is not willing to. That is how I see it. Because now we have spent over $300 billion for this election. And my pain is that at the end of the day, this process, building of ballot boards, killing at the polling union, counting of votes, transmission of results manually, at the end of the day, what we will have will be in some form of duty-crazy. The election would, from what we are saying, will eventually be decided by 15 people, 15 judges, subjecting the will of 200 million people to 15 people in a system whereby, when they raid the home of the judges, they fund the Mongols' amount of it. If you want to know how efficient a particular sector of a country is, look at the educational system. The educational system is in, is in Komato's, look at the health system, look at every other sector. If those sectors are in a terrible state, don't expect that the judicial system will be one, you know, super place. No. So in that kind of system, you're not subject, the will of 200 million people to a judiciary that is alleged as corrupt. Okay. So we had the next question as to whether the country's internet infrastructure is capable, does the capacity to transmit the data? Because there was also a report that said we necessarily didn't need the beavers in terms of accreditation, so the network was not necessary. Well, you know, the challenge right here is as to transmission of results. And at the time where there are several reports and evidence to that fact, even, you know, on social media as to thugs truncating the process, harassing polling unit agents as to don't upload the results. But there were several, you know, conversation as to not having, you know, the necessary internet infrastructure to upload these results. So the question is, do you think that we knew that we were, we had a lacuna in this, you know, in this era of internet infrastructure? And if we didn't know or we knew, do you think that we probably could have addressed it? Were we too very confident that we had what it takes to transmit? What exactly are we dealing with? Is it that people did not allow the polling agents to transmit this result or was just that the network automatically didn't respond? I think the people from all walks of life, people at INEC, people at the polling unit, people, the thugs that didn't want the election to be transmitted electronically are working for some people who want power. So if those thugs are well-oriented, if they know the essence of having good people in governance, definitely they won't do it. They would think that maybe this person's character is contributing to making me a thug, you know. So I think it is a human thing. Then the beaver system, I think it uses what I can call a soft technology in the sense that it should have been done if you are producing a beaver system for a developing country where the internet is strong, I would assume that the beavers will be able to work with 2G network, 3G network, not 5G high-speed internet. Okay. So this question of beavers and of course the role of the judiciary, I would like to bring in a courage and serial removal before we introduce our next guest who has joined us via Zoom Courage. The he has raised a point to talk about technology and all that, but he has also talked about the judiciary. I would like you to talk about both of them. Starting with technology, I'm always going to ask, I'm always going to ask if you use beavers, okay. I have my phone here, device. If you use beavers, everybody use the beavers through a credit and to validate the voters to look at who is eligible and who is not eligible, okay. Highly successful, I think we can say more than 90% success rate. On the same day, after the voting was concluded, they are having problems taking the results to the portal, which is just to snap it, snap, snap. Just take a picture and send it. And I mean, you can even take the device and if the dealing wasn't uploaded, you can look at it. I'm sure it's like a tablet. Okay, let's go to the gallery and see what was snapped. The record should still be there. And I'm sure it can still be uploaded. So what do you say to that? Because I think it's, for me, it's just a flimsy excuse, really. Even if it takes 48 hours, which it's been taking. So that's number one, number two. And the alternative of going to the court now for cases like akiti, we're seeing where there are complaints. Just prepare your petition for the tribunal stage and then head there instead of making all these noise like the normal is making. Just speak to those two things, please. Thank you. First of all, you were talking about us providing you real evidence. And I know that very soon you joined your collection and, you know, join us in the legal profession. I know that's been very soon. Clearly, you know, you know, something that is called circumstantial evidence and circumstantial evidence is also admissible in law. Now, if we are told you that we were on ground and we saw officials of government, we saw talks working for the government. We saw presiding officers dancing to the tune of government and not declaring results. You know, that, of course, is, you know, evidence that we have. And even if it is, okay, these evidence are circumstantial. They feel admissible and to a whole extent, both a long way to prove the assertions that we are making that, you know, there is that, you know, disruption of the electoral process and there is that collusion to subvert the will of the people. Also said in some polling units, we had polling units where the folks in there mandated that they must vote for the governor's candidates. And that erupted crisis in Borneo, our seven in Riverside. And again, in circumstances like that, expect INEC to either cancel such units or call for election, but that was not done. So when we are making these allegations, we are making them based on the circumstances on ground so that you don't throw away everything I've said this morning. So that's on the one hand. On another hand, the beefers, you and I know that just the way we have our phone, even if I'm not a technological expert, but there are some things a reasonable man will know. If I snap from E-8 and whether offline or online, I'm not going to do that. If I send this over a period of time, it will be delivered. So I don't think beefers is such a weak machine that if E-8 is not pushed out, it won't get to the subversion. So there's that suspicion that something is fishy or something is wrong. And INEC must come and explain to the people because you have told the people and you've written it in your guidelines that this is how the election should go. You've raised the expectations of the people and we come to the ballot and what we have is something different. It's worrisome and we have to question INEC as failed laws. I agree with your guest in the studio because sovereignty belongs to the people but given the scenario of failure, failure of INEC, we may have to resort to the courtroom for a few persons. It will now be like an electoral college where a few persons, justices will now decide the fate of Nigerians one way or another instead of the popular will of the people to prevail just because of the failure of INEC. And we must emphasize that billions of taxpayers' money have been spent to get these things right. Did they not get it right in Plattu? Courage. They can't fight in Oshun. So we have this scenario in this election. So let's get back to the studio now. Courage. I mean we still have Deji here. So we would come to Deji now. We have a friend of Deji on Zoom as well. We're definitely with him in no time. Advocacy manager of Malala from Nigeria. But just quickly before we connect with Femi right here, Deji you're here. Now one of the issues, the reason why the beavers were introduced, which I think is a factor that is responsible for the voter turnout and the engagement of Nigerians, the introduction of the beavers via the electoral act and the fact that you have the IRF where this result will be transmitted electronically. So I want you to speak to the issue because there's been a lot of consensus that raised us to the results not being uploaded up until now. The results were supposed to be uploaded at the polling unit. And the reason for this, the reason why we have this technology introduced was to take care of the integrity of our electoral process transparently because we feel that for every other time you have the manual process is docked toward. The result sheet is manipulated. People, if you have real time as it's going on and everyone is watching, they are seeing you uploaded, there's no time for all of that. So I want you to speak to this particular issue because it feels like there's a lot of consensus saying we're not uploading the results up until now, we can't see the results. And the results were supposed to be, we're supposed to be talking about the results uploaded two days after the elections or almost getting to three days? I pray we don't go back to an era whereby if you want to send a message to me on WhatsApp now, it has to travel for like two, five days. I pray we don't go back to that era. Then another thing is if we are to use, if the percentage of people that were not able to successfully upload it via Vivaas is shorter than the percentage that successfully uploaded it, that's not sabotage. But what we have now, it's an intentional sabotage against the system. And I think there should be serious consequence for actions. If what I made promised was technology first, then manually. But what we have now is technology right off just manually. This is not what I made promised. The credibility of the process. Election is a big deal. Election in any third world or developing country is a serious issue. In any state or government whereby it will play the winner system where citizens look up to government for the basics. Where the institution is not so strong. The person you have in power matters a lot. So for anybody to think they can sabotage the system and go scot-free. For example, the woman whose picture has gone viral that was bloodied. What has happened to the person, to those people that attacked the woman till today? Nothing. You see series of manipulation of the result. What has happened to the people that made that happen? Nothing. So tell me now what we discourage people from the system, from not doing the same thing when the government election is being held. You are failed to upload the result as promised. Nobody has been brought to book. At the end of the day, this is what we're still going to have during the government election. And this transmits to the effectiveness in office. Because if you know that only if you get to the office credibly, that is when you can win re-election. Definitely you will go on out to perform. And honestly, the president has tried. He's not a super human being. He cannot be everywhere. He has tried as he gets all this vote buying. But Nigerian politicians are very smart. As we are covering it from one angle, they are coming up with another form of, my party's on the other, from another angle. So this issue of not using the beaver system is not something that we should tolerate at all. We saw it in the case where the result were uploaded real time. So I want a system whereby after the election, we will have less litigation. The judiciary are not super human beings. Then this thing itself is affecting the judicial system instead because from now that the election has ended to almost a year. You'll be having election cases or the other at the court. What happened to people that have family dispute, land dispute, charge custody, different kind of issues. So the political space has flooded the judicial space. And by so do you can't get justice where you have real issues, non-political issues. How long do we want to do that? If this is the kind of system that we want, that if you conduct under the elections at the presidential, legislative and state assembly, if, let's say it is 100, if we have a system whereby 95% or 90% will be resolved by the court. Let us save ourselves money and stress. Take the CV of these people. Take you to the court. Look at them. Invite them for an interview. Who is most qualified? Because I don't know if you have some people. Let me bring it from the day we go. Sorry for keeping you waiting. It's really a heated one. What are your thoughts on what our guests have been saying so far? Well, thank you very much. And it's a pleasure to join the show. I think that I see failure on many levels. First, I must acknowledge and I agree with all the panellists who have said that INEC terribly overpromised and grossly under-delivered in this election. And I think that it's a great opportunity for people to get to the stage and grossly under-delivered in this election. Nobody forced INEC to promise us that beavers would upload results from polling units onto a portal and that whole Nigerians will be able to access that portal and see. And for all Nigerians that promises for INEC to say we are going to be transparent with this electoral process and we are going to raise the bar beyond what we have seen in previous elections. And they have run a pilot. We saw it, it didn't work perfectly, but Nigerians were excited at the prospect of having this done nationally. And I think that from any objective analysis of what we have seen on Saturday's election, it was shambolic in terms of the beavers system operating. And I think the failure is across many levels and I will try to analyse it. One is the fact that we are deploying largely co-members as ad hoc staff across the nation, over 176,000 polling units. Many of them are interacting with the tab for the first time. Many of them have not been taught with computers in their schools and so the learning calls for them to understand that machine is something that you must deal with. I have a number of polling units where friends who are technologically inclined had to step up to the co-members and say if this machine is not working, let's see and let's help you troubleshoot it. And they discovered that they were facing just very minor issues. The hub is not loading. They are short on the hub and it started and the issues are fixed. And so on some levels I feel that some of the issues are not deliberately sabotaged, but they have given very sophisticated gadgets to young people who are interacting with them for the first time outside of a training environment. That is one. And secondly, there was also deliberate attempt. We have seen different beavers' results uploaded that people have taken at the polling unit. People who are at the polling unit took pictures of the original result announced and then when they are seeing beavers on the platform of INEC, they are seeing all third results sheets. And I think that is an embarrassment to INEC. I personally feel INEC does not want us to see the beavers they have uploaded on their system because it will be an embarrassment to the nation and to INEC itself because that is a deliberate attempt to twat electoral process in many parts of Nigeria. Lagos have seen different examples and different parts of Nigeria and I don't think this was done by one political party. I think it was done by many political parties trying to influence electoral process one way or the other. And for this to happen at such a widespread level it shows that INEC is not prepared to run an election of this size and this manner and with the amounts that we have invested in this election. Thirdly, I think the importance of education now comes to play. If our people are not educated and as you can see many of the results that we now have evidence online are coming from our band centers. We need to therefore ensure that people in our rural areas are educated. They know how to defend their votes. They do not resort to violence when they feel that they have been disenfranchised but that they can collect evidence that will be useful to political parties and to actors in court in order to ensure that people who have been disenfranchised can claim their victory. We have been told to call this up in no time. We are just going to move away but I'd like to ask you for the point that you have raised. The issue of education and violence as it were, you say that people need to be able to understand that accept the results as it were and not be involved in violence but what's the ratio, what's the connection with Thergery because that's what we saw. We saw people coming out having guns and being very violent and you know doing all sorts of things, snatching the ballot boxes threatening people you know attacking them in different spots, in different spaces however you want to put it. So I'd like to know where the situation lies here. Is it not just really education or is it the fact that you know these persons have been recruited by these politicians for their own selfish gain? I mean it's not rocket science. When you have a country where we have one of the highest levels of out of school children in the world estimates, official estimate put it at about 10 million. People have said that estimate is even grossly underestimated out of school children in Nigeria is way higher than that but let's say 10 million people. You have a country where unemployment double digits over 20 percent and you have a country where poverty is double digits over 30 percent in a population of 200 million. What that means is that you have a pool of young people who have not been to school who do not have a job and who are debt poor. It means that if you give me probably 20 million today, I can mobilize an army because by offering people 1000 in fact today now that there's no Naira. If I offer people 1000 Naira cash, I can build a army of 2000 people and say go and destroy things. They are jobless they are not educated, they are poor. When you have such a sizable amount, if you look at estimated. I'm so sorry we have to go, I'm so sorry we have to go. I'm so sorry we have to pull the line. I'm sorry because of time we have to take our next program. But the importance of education can not be overemphasized. We look forward to having you on subscan programs on this station to talk about this. But I just like to put it to a Leonard guest to this morning this morning. And of course you look at section 135 sub 1 that provides that the guilt of an accused should be proved beyond reasonable doubt. That was said before. I'm not going to law school I don't need to go to law school. We cannot conduct a trial by media on the basis of what is called circumstantial evidence. Because I don't have the capability capacity as a judge to prove or to judge that matter. You have to take your circumstantial evidence to court. Now we here we have a media rules that require that before we are found guilt of slander or libel. We have to we have to, you know, we have checks and balances. So this is not a court. If you have your circumstantial evidence my brother take it to court and prove that yes we did what you said it is. Thank you very much we have to go. And that's the size of our package. Merci. Thank you so much gentlemen for being part of the show this morning. We do appreciate you. And of course we look forward to having you be part of the programming as we proceed. Hopefully we may not come back to the election studios. We might have the result. I mean if we have the result we hope so. If we do have the result today or later today then we would move on to subsequent programming. We have you you know to come through for us. Thank you once again Deji. Thank you Femi and thank you Courage. Alright we have to go. Thank you so much we will talk on the other side Courage. I appreciate the time. Good night.