 You're welcome back to the breakfast on PlotsTV Africa. Let's talk 2023 elections and all the process that would make it work. The Invented National Electoral Commission, INEC, has announced that pre-registration exercise is complete and of course they are in the process of making sure that everything necessary for the 2023 elections is put in place. They announced that they have registered over 1 million voters in that exercise that ended the 21st of September 2021. Let's now invite our guest, the political activist Abiodu Oluwashio. Good morning. Thank you for joining us. Good morning, Magritte. So just before you go on, I just wanted to quickly chip in. INEC has mentioned that the first stage of registration has been concluded. There's going to be an exit. It's not complete, like Maneta said. It's from the 28th of June to the 21st of September was the first stage. The next stage starts from the 4th of October to the 20th of December. So just to chip that in. Good morning once again, Mr Oluwashio. Good morning. All right. They registered over 1 million voters this period that ended September 21st. And there's been, you know, lots of talk about Nigerian youth going ahead to vote and taking it off Twitter into the polling unit and all of that. Now, 1 million people and counting. Do you think, you know, the youth did well to have voted as much as 1 million? Or do you think they could have done a lot? And if you think that, you know, the numbers could have been higher, would you say that's the faults of the youth who didn't turn up as much as they should have or maybe the fact that INEC didn't do a lot of sensitization regarding the election process? Thank you very much. Regarding the numbers, the 1 million, it's 1,947 people. The number from the INEC as regards the first stage of registration. The youth are 771,770, which is 77% of the total registered, the total number of the people who are done with the first stage. If we look at it critically, we'll notice that even during this period, a whole lot of youth were not carried along. Just only if you look at the total number of youths in Nigeria, if INEC did proper sensitization and a lot of publicity, a lot of awareness, voter registration and enlightenment and all, probably the number might have been higher. And as well, there was a time they suspended it in between. They were having issues with the deeds that they were given to people. So that also affected this number. I think they could have done better, but this is the first time. So the numbers are coming up and I believe probably when there is another opening like this, the numbers might do very, very well. What do you think our target should be considering Nigeria's youth population? If we have only 700,000 plus, and that regards the complete registration now, there's still a backlog of more than 2 million that very likely will add to this number if you're looking at the pre-registerance and then the completed registrations. But what do you think our target should be? There's only going to be four different sessions of this registration. And that means if we look at these figures, then we probably wouldn't have more than 2.4 million, maybe 2.8 million completed online registrations by the time the elections are set. Do you think that's also very poor? And what should our target be heading to the 2023 elections considering our youth population? Let's not forget that there is still going to be physical registration. So some of the youth that were not captured now might also be captured during the physical registration. But looking at the tech way, the internet way that we have these days, you notice that we can easily reach the youth through sponsored ads on Instagram, sponsored ads on Twitter, Facebook and all. But because some of these social media giants are not active in Nigeria because of the ban on all, these are some of the issues that are affecting this number. If they did a proper, let's say, the way BBE Niger does their promotion, their adverts, trends and all, use influencers, use everybody to make sure this, to push the numbers. If we can have that for the INEC registration, I believe the numbers we are having now will be maybe a pint, a little pint out of what we'll be expecting. So probably if we have a big awareness from DSTV to radio stations, to newspapers, to all these big social media platforms, I am sure we'll have a very huge number. But I still believe that since we still have some of these youths to be captured through the physical registration, the numbers might still improve. But if you look at the numbers of people registered for jams, numbers of people registered for all these talks online, there is high possibility that if we continue this way, the numbers might increase the subsequent registrations. So why would you think that the sensitization for these pre-registration exercises was not as it should be, seeing that it's now an online process? Why do you think that it was not in our faces? Did you scroll through Instagram one of these days and you saw an advert asking you to vote and giving directions to do that? Lots of Nigerian youth would say they didn't see anything like that. And in that case, is there any reason why we can justify it? Actually, the justification for it might be from INEC. I don't know the justification for it. But as a youth, during this period, I've never checked through Instagram except for maybe some organizations or NGO who are calling people out, are calling the youths that they should come out and do their registration. Someone like myself, I did some online awareness to make sure people from, people who are closer to me register for their voters card. But let's say our higher institutions, let's say we engage the student union president, I will go to secondary school and engage the students. When we really go out to do that, we'll make it easier for people to register from the grassroots. Some people as well might not even hear of this online registration at all during this period. They might not if we cannot rule it out. So if we are to do that, just like the national population census, that some people will not be captured, but during registration, what they do is they go house to house to go and meet people so as to register them. So if we can also do that, it is something possible that INEC will have, just like the way they do it before, that they will have people at the place then you go there to go and register the physical registration. Then you can just use some youths to do the feed work for you. So they just go around house to house with the, probably, carry along the town criers of each street. Just where the Landlord Association, the Community Development Association and all. Once they carry them along, they pass this message to those people. These ones are the ones that will pass it across to the people from the grassroots. From there as well. From there we can get a lot of youth. You know, some just have the phone. Some just have their probably small phone. They are not connected to the internet. Why some are even connected to the internet and don't even know of this project. Why some, they know of this project, but probably during at the stage or the other, they find the process ambiguous and they left it. So we cannot rule out all these things from affecting this figure. So if we were to improve the next time, probably they might use the justification that this is the first time and there is always room for improvement. I believe they should engage more youths, more influencers, the Community Development Association, the Landlord Association, youth agencies, NYCN, NCN, NANDS and all. Student union bodies. If they engage all these people and utilize their strengths, they will be able to mobilize more than this moment. These are things that I believe INEC should be aware of and they also should have the resources to pull through. I think that's what Aneta was bringing up. Maybe they still don't go ahead and do these things because it's not like they can't claim that they don't have the funding to engage all these bodies that you've mentioned and all these little, little pockets here and there of persons that will be influential to get more and more, more young people registered. The National Orientation Agency also is an agency of government that should also work hand in hand with INEC to ensure that every bit of information, every new concreting in the country is covered. There's information passed to every single corner but we probably would get back to that. I want us to now talk about the level of interest. From 2015 to now, what would you say or would you describe as the level of interest of young Nigerians to actually be a part of the electoral process, to get registered, to actually get their voters' cards and vote? Do you think it has increased? In the last few years, do you think that maybe has also waned off a little bit? Yes, thank you very much. I think 2015 was a moment where a lot of young Nigerians joined the electoral process. If you notice, the current government utilised the media very well to get themselves in power. They used most of the young ones to achieve this. And by 2019, I think a little bit of interest was reduced a bit. But looking at what happened at the end starts and everything, I think it is part of the reason why some people are having the interest to join now, to do as they probably vote, register and convert their people to vote. I believe the interest has improved than the subsequent elections. Okay, we're now going to bring in someone else who is joining us to also share his views on this, Yakin Michael. Good morning, thanks for joining us. Good morning. Good morning. Great to have you on the breakfast. Let's start with your thoughts on the current figures of continuous voter registration. The online process that has currently been suspended will start again on the 4th of October. It says that just slightly above 1 million persons have been fully registered. Young persons or youth in that number is just about 700,000 and above. Would you say that INEC has done well enough when youth have, of course, gotten involved well enough? Mr Michael, can you hear us? Alright, we'll probably go back to Mr Lu A Xiong and connect with Michael in a bit. Alright, Xiong, can you hear us? Yes, and me too. So we've been talking about youth, really, and their involvement with elections, their participation. And I really still want to ask you about that question of interest. Do you think Nigerian youth are sufficiently interested enough to get off their phones and go into the fields to vote? Because when we look at what Nigerian youths talk about online, it really also revolves around politics. They talk about the failure of government. They complain about the leaders. So there's a lot of conversation about from the youths and about the youths regarding politics. But when we look at the figures on ground on election day, it seems like a far cry from what we see online. So do you think the youths, you know, is all talk and no action? You know, and do you think they're sufficiently interested? And what exactly can the Nigerian government do to make sure that Nigerian youth participate more in politics? Okay, thank you very much. Let me start from what the Nigerian government can do to make the youths participate more in politics. Let us look back at the Eighth Assembly when the Syracuse-led assembly signed, brought about the Notre-Yonge too. Now, you know, there is a particular interest when you have somebody of your age, somebody of your age range participating in an election. There is a way you want to support them. This person is young, is new. I would believe this person is Niger. This person should be able to represent our interest well in enough of these old people, enough of this, enough of that. This started, the bill started in 2019 whereby we have, we were activated before the 2019 elections and we have some young people in politics today. Now, looking at 2023, by the time a lot of young people have been encouraged to contest and occupy particular posts in Nigerian politics today, let's say both parties, both APC and PDP or any other political parties, give more opportunities. Let's say out of the total number of people contesting in a political party, 40% are youth. For sure, those 40% will mobilize more youth to participate in politics. For sure, because those will be their immediate constituency. The youth will be their immediate constituency. But if we have a situation whereby out of 100 people, only one youth is contesting, it is going to demoralize, it's going to demoralize the youth from participating in elections because why should I just go back, vote for the same set of people year in, year out, with no results, this and that. But look at, let's say BBN for example, I know it is a different platform totally, but because they believe the guys there are young, that is why a lot of young people are putting their interest in it. So if we have a lot of young guys vying for particular posts, vying for a lot of political posts in Nigeria, a lot of younger ones too will want to participate in politics. That is for sure. So if the government wants to help out, aside from the not too young to run the, they should also increase the quota given to young ones in each election. Let's say a state House of Assembly should be limited to the age of 18 or 19 to 35. Then for the governorship and president should be limited to 35 to 50. So sure you have a lot of young guys who are coming believing that this is the real change that power is now shifted from the older generation to the younger ones. So I believe if you have a youth contestant for sure you have more youth who are interested in participating in an election. Alright, now let's bring in once again Yakin Mai. Thanks for joining us once again. Thank you so much. Good morning. So let's get your thoughts first of all on the whole process which has currently been or ended the first phase and we currently have 1,081,000 plus that have been registered. Do you call this a success for now? Well, the definition of success is really true. But then as you got the political environment as you got the political sector in Nigeria I am of your opinion that the CBL as it is currently ongoing cannot be said to be a success. Well, we might have experienced a significant improvement issue that youth are much more interested in politics but we cannot outrightly say that that is a success. So Michael, really we've been talking about how to get more youth to be interested in this and something your colleague have said is that to get more youth interested in the electoral process in voting, in registering to vote, that what needs to be done is to see more representation of the youth on the ballot paper such as increasing the quota that is allowed for young people to be represented in politics. Do you agree with that? Or would you say it should start from education or the grassroots, from a primary and secondary education system that reorientation about our rights, you know, to vote? Yes. Not so simply the not so long-term and then still fighting oppression. So right now, I feel the issue is not with the age limit. I think the issue right now is enlightenment and sensitization. The average Nigerian youth holds the opinion that politics is a dirty game. So if you're going to get into that, you need to be all shady and all. So I feel, and I think that there needs to be mass sensitization. The average Nigerian youth needs to be educated on the importance of politics and its place in national development. We need to understand that should the boys' school system leaders are bred and those leaders are the older, they are further with the responsibility of advancing the course of the country. So politics is not shady, politics is not a dirty game. Politics is a platform that should be embraced by every Nigerian youth. If and truly if you want to see Nigeria red again. Let's go back to Miss Oluwashion Abiodu. I want us to look at the regions and the numbers. It seems to be a pretty fair spread across the country with regards to registration of voters. But there are certain states that topped the list, Anambra with currently the highest, 138,000 completed registration. We also have Oshun state with 63,000 that have completed their registration cano. I think it's a third with 56,000 completed registration. Quickly share your views on how this is spread out in different regions. And you know Anambra state, pretty impressive with its registration. Maybe because of the elections. I think yes, yes. We should put into perspective the upcoming election. In Anambra and as well in Oshun, I expect a good turnout too in Iketi where an election is coming up too as well. Oh just 19,000 in Iketi. Pretty disappointing in Lagos also. Lagos currently only has 25,000. Yes. So if we look at Lagos or Yondu, aside from Oshun, I think Oshun has a lot of people who registered but are yet to complete. And as well they are yet to finish the registration, complete registration. Oshun has that number. But I think it is majorly because of the election coming up. Cano doing well, I think that is because some of their political leaders in Cano are trying to sensitize and do the grassroots work just to prove that they have the numbers. You know, this argument has been online that the South should have more numbers because we are closer to the ocean. Why those ones are the deserts? Why are they having more numbers? It's a lot of truth here and there. I believe the reason why Cano is in that list is because some of their leaders are taking it up that the younger ones should register and finish it up because he wants to prove a point. If a political leader, I can tell you, none of the governors in Southwest, I didn't see any of them come out to say the younger ones should participate in the ongoing CVR registration. I don't think you see it on any of their platforms. None of them advertised it. None of them tried to carry the younger ones along, not even some of their aides. We don't even have them coming out to say hey guys, register, try to facilitate more people to register. If we have these people, if they do the same thing, I know the reason why you know, for sure because of the election, political members, political parties will try to register people so that they will be able to vote for them in the election. But because of the other things that are not in the election, they just left it, just there, they are not interested because the election is not around the corner. I believe by the time I next start the next, the physical registration, you will see these political parties coming out to tell people to go and vote, trying to converse them, trying to say, we will take you there, we will give you a free access so that you will be able to do it on time, get your PVC on time and all that. But that is because elections are coming and they have a fast approach. But in the case of Anambra and Oshun, the month in between, Anambra is November this year, Oshun is also early next year. So I think it is because of the proximity to the election, that is why we have those numbers coming in. And for Kano, it is because they want to prove the point that they have the numbers, not just the 2 million KKK votes from Kano, Katina and Kaduna, that they have the numbers that they can, they are actually more than the people from the South. Everybody should be trying to prove that point, not just those in Kano state on Katina or Kaduna argument. But you understand that the Northerners, they tend to be more involved in politics than some of us from the South. Still, responsibility of those here. Also, for the people who are very, very active online, there should be a lot more energy. And once again, I would say I'm disappointed with Lagos numbers because of the population here and because of the conversation here, seems to be very, very loud. Yeah, Kid Michael, I'm going to round up with you. Quickly also share your views on what your expectations are. There are still three more phases. Do you think that there would be many more people getting involved? What more do you think needs to be added to ensure that we have maybe, hopefully, 10 million, 12 million online registered voters? Okay, thank you very much. I think where we are, we can be accredited to the fallout of the Lake Hitokit incident. So, as you speak, I think the youth are much more interested in politics, but then there's still a lot to be done. For instance, out of the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria, the nodes account for every chunk of electorate. And then, I don't know if it's true or not, that's up for debate, but then we all know that there's still a lot of education that needs to be done to the people in the north, no offense to them. So, I think there needs to be mass sensitization. I think the youth needs to be enlightened. They need to be proper channels and platforms for Nigerian citizens to get politically educated such that they understand the state of Nigerian policy, such that they understand where they are coming in and when they understand where they are coming from and where they intend to get to. If all of these channels and platforms are put in place, I think in my area, the Nigerian youth is interested in Nigerian politics. Well, for your time on the show, and Oluwa Shinwo as well, thank you very much for coming. Alright, have a great day. Okay, we'll take a short break and return with our next conversation, which is, of course, going away from voter registration now to the economy and why there's more and more Nigerians eager to save their money in foreign currency. We'll talk about that after this break. Stay with us.