 And we're back with the breakfast and plus TV Africa, Zika Yaitouk will be joining us on the off-the-press this morning. Zika, it's good to have you join us. Hi, thank you for the privilege. Thank you for having me. That was a delight. Let's take a look at the leadership newspaper this morning, boldly written on the leadership. I mean rising verbal attacks by a candidate, Abdul Salami, can meet him once against violence and incitement. That's the board caption you find. Atikou Tulligou refused to shield Swartz, continue not swindling. Kwankwasou acts atikou. Ashiwajitou withdraw from race over allegation. Nigerians should vote only patriotic savants and leaders. Well, you know, just in all of this, the big question would be if the political parties know the kind of candidate they are projecting, they should have done more like an underground, you know, checks and all of that before I put it on a certain candidate rather than having one of those back and forth. I mean, I think it would save us that kind of energy. Obi-Premises knew Nigeria at Kaduna Raleigh. RGP not retiring to complete a four-year tenure. And there were also, you know, conversation as to tenure elongation right here from police officers and lagers, you know, it sounded like it was a rumor. Darkness looms as Gensko gets only 30% gas supply, caught dismisses suit against APC same-faith ticket editorial. That's an editorial on DSS allegation against Amalfi Lee. And drug barons face tougher a year ahead, Marwa declares. These are some of the headlines you find this morning on the leadership newspaper. Alright, from the leadership, we'll move on next to the nation newspaper. The main story this morning, SCNs are in the news and they are saying that polls under threat by returning officers' powers. A writer, Olamid Baku, raises concern over Section 65 of Electoral Act. At Bakuba, 6th clarification on Section 134 of the 1999 Constitution, right just below the must-have, we deducted 3.3 trillion there from federation account for subsidy, says NNPCL. Above the must-have, NDLA sees its properties, 500 billion narrow drugs in two years. APC, PCC, slam speed before avoided response to Attico gate. Direct flight from Israel to Nigeria starts in March. Why IG Usman's tenure was extended? That's by the minister. A writer, all the stories on the front page of the nation newspaper, Kwon Koso is saying LP is built on ethnic sentiment. Ukraine's Interior Minister, 17 orders die in crash. There's a rush trip just below that story. Two remaining victims of a dull, trinket nap attack regain freedom. Those are the major stories on the nation newspaper this morning. Well, let's turn our attention from the nation and take a quick look at the punch newspaper. Furious scarcity bites harder. Marketers blame NNPCL. It meant to sell petrol at 279 per litre, supply gap, widens and lingers. And just before we move away, NNPC, GMD defends subsidy or production now at 1.52 million barrels. I don't know if we're still with all of this meets the OPEC quota. What has OPEC allocated to all producing nation, including Nigeria, we producing above or producing below the quota? Nigeria owes China, Japan, Germany, two others, 4.85 billion dollars. That's a lot. And Manfield appeals court summons and challenges George. Envoy stopped Abiola from imagining president. You remember the, the, okay, Abiola's election. That's what a former president, Rusha Guno Basundra is saying. And train attack to a dough chief's five orders arrested. Federal government asks U.S. to probe Niger and Don's death. These are some of the headlines you find this morning on the punch news people. And now to the Guardian. Poses on Buhari's security success. That's our, the lead story on the Guardian. This morning, several riders, they are lousy. However, Envoy sent lack of transparency, make nation unsafe. No price too high to pay for political stability. And I'm several others. Then there is the story of CBN Ali's fears over counterfeit new Maira notes. Buhari, okay, is 1.9 trillion for all NPC to reconstruct 44 federal votes. Oh, all NPC did not reconstruct votes. All right, a ball of caliber we elected days after second by Supreme Court. I was offered 10 million Maira visa to implicate Syracuse says of a robbery suspect. All right, let's see. Senior advocates question legal framework of 2023 elections. I understand Nigeria's issue says Kwan Koso Akchaten House. Those are the main stories on the Guardian this morning. Is it going to, once again, thank you for joining us. We appreciate your time always. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's a privilege. I'm always say. So let's start off with the leadership on the leadership. It talks about the vebbler times. And I'd like to ask you, what's the essence of, you know, the peace parts that you have candidates, you know, always cited every other time. And it's not different, you know, result at the end of the day. So what's really the essence? Why do we have our candidates signed in peace parts? And usually the campaigns and the elections don't end up peaceful. You see, the peace part by right should be something that is desirable and something that we should. I don't want to use the words celebrate, but appreciate is a better word for that. And anybody who wants to be the president of the federal Republic of Nigeria or in fact hold any public office because it comes down to the state, we signed peace pact as well in a quibble. And anybody who must owe a certain allegiance to peace. If you don't do, you don't have that as a personal private policy, then when you get into office, what you believe is what you will exhibit and is bothering. But the other hand is any form of legislation or action or agreement that does not have a bite to it. A teeth, I would say that can bite makes people who don't subscribe to virtues to jettison it. A lot of times people obey the law, not because it's the right thing to do, but because they are deterred by it. For instance, you find a Nigerian jumping queue in Nigeria, but when the same Nigerian goes outside the country, he doesn't want to jump queue. Why doesn't he want to jump queue? Because he knows that if he tries that the system will not take it lightly. So even if a person is as loud as possible, when the person gets into a library, you find the person keeping quiet or whispering, hardly will you go to an environment and then start to shout because that's how your nature is. Nature is shaped by the environment that you find yourself. What am I trying to say? I'm running an election and I call my people and I say this sort of a thing. I remember very well, one of my media aides wrote something derogatory about the person and it was brought to me. I told him to pull it down and apologize and he did. So in the state, people know that even when they hear it, they say no, no, it's not from the guy. But it's worse when you now start to see the people directly on the podium who a person wants to be a president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, making fun of or mocking or castigating or insulting another person. It just shows Nigerians that this sort of a person does not deserve such a high office. So aside from the Peace Committee not having is like a toothless bulldog. It's like an appeal committee not having the capacity to bite. Aside from that, I think that Nigerians should actually look at everybody knowing that with the current situation where the beavers make the votes to count, we should know the sort of people that we should not allow into our public offices. There's a broadcast that I did this morning and in that broadcast is basically telling the people, you know, the time for the euphoria of campaign rallies is over. The time has come for so bad reflection for you to really sit and ask yourself, do I want my life? Government is a management of your life. Today they can decide that tomorrow is public holiday and no bank opens, no matter what transaction you had, no matter what you were going to do, you are going to stay at home because no bank is going to happen. So government micromanages your life as it were. So the question is, is this the quality of person that I really want to leave this nation in the hands of for the next four years? It's not like four hours or four days or four weeks, but the next four years. So my appeal is not too much to the to the to the committee on the peace pact, but to Nigerians. Watch these people, forget about party, forget about ethnic consideration. All those things are not sustainable. Look at the quality, the character, the competence, the capability of every individual. Who do you want to be your president? When you look at, you know, we talk about the big five, but the time has come for us to maybe open it larger because, you know, I talk now not as a party man, but as an analyst and I've listened to some people and I'm like, wow, this guy makes sense. And one of such people is the SDP candidate. You know, you listen to him and you can see someone that's articulate, you know, and before we had the unfortunate incident in our party, there was something that Mr. Kachiku put forward, which is what he calls a citizen's bill, where every public servant must, you know, not, not appreciate, must patronize public institutions. If you are a public servant, your children should go to public schools. When you do this, then the public servants will be compelled to make public institutions to work even in their own personal interests. That was an awesome bill that I really hold dear to, but for, like I said, what happened in our party. So coming back to my conclusion on this matter, I think Nigerians should cool down, you know, after the reggae played the blues. This is a time for us to come down and play the blues where we cannot really sit down and look very, very carefully at who these people are and ask ourselves one question. Do I want my life in the hands of this person for four years? All right. Let's still stay with the elections on the nation newspaper right now. Two S.C.N.s are in the news, precisely are posed under threat by returning officers pass. I want you to comment on that. That's a credit to O'Leary O'Lannick, their co-raising concern of us section 65 of the electoral act. And of course, Agbacuba also mentioned about another section of the electoral act. Let's get your comment quickly, Ms. Daniel Aitok. Okay. Incidentally, I have not looked at the details, but I have enough background to be able to say something about it. And if it was another person talking, I would very easily dismiss it. But coming from a senior advocate, I believe that he has studied the current electoral act. And within the context of the current electoral act, the returning officers, in my opinion, are no longer those people that were so mighty that their words were final. No. For one, two, three reasons. Number one is that returning officers are more like you, whatever you return that is not consistent can be overruled. Unlike before, where INE could not do anything, the moment you either under duress or anything declare false reports, the only option you had was to go to court, but not so in the current electoral act. In the current electoral act, you cannot even falsify five figures. You cannot, because I take my election, for instance, in a quiet room. By 6 p.m., I know my figure in every polling unit. That is why I'm joining the Labour Party to say that I next should please allow us to upload all our polling unit agents. The reason is that their server has been, you know, not working, I say from because I've sat in our situation room where we try to upload our polling unit agents, and you just have this frustration of network of bouncing back and things, and it's really frustrating. In a quiet room, we have 4,353 polling units, and in my party, we have agents in all of them. But as of today, we've hardly done 3,000, and we still have over 1,000 to do, okay? And I want INEC to put up that unless something happened, you know, because in the past one or two days, I've not been able to sit down and see what they are doing, but I want INEC to allow parties to upload all their agents, even if it means two, three days extension, they should do it so that you will know your result, because with the current electoral act and the beavers, at the end of accreditation, your agent will send you, like in our own case, we've sent them a situation room, at the end of accreditation, we know the number of people that are voted in every, that are to vote in every polling unit. Then secondly, at the end of election, we know our figure from every polling unit, every polling unit. And with that, if for instance, I won with a margin of maybe 50,826, and you gave me 50,825, you've got to tell me where the one vote was missing. You know, I'm just giving you an example that every serious candidate will know her result or his result before you even hear anything about Collision Officer or Returning Officer or anything. And if and when I've won the election, Returning Officer, you are wasting your time, if you want to carry it and give it to somebody, I'll petition INEC immediately and INEC will look into the beavers back end and collect every of the 3,000, 4,353 units and their results will tell you with my results and they will declare me the winner. So I really don't see how they are threatened anymore. We need to know what the current electoral act says. Ezekiah, let's move away from the issue of electoral act and still on the leadership newspaper. The retirement of the IGP, I mean the Inspector General, please, has also been one that has generated a lot of concern as Nigeria inch closer to the elections in February and of course in March. However, the Inspector General, please, is expected to have, you know, retired when he or take a bow at an office on the festive march when he clocks 60. But with the provision of the Police Act of 2020, the IGP is now supposed to have a kind of four-year period and the President has already given him a lot of appointment in that regard. What do you make of this? Yeah, you know, we need to be able to balance out things and have what we call emotional intelligence. It's lacking in our leadership structure. Now, this man has reached the mandatory age of retirement, which is 60 years on one hand. On the other hand, we have an election coming. So you ask yourself, did election just come up suddenly like a pandemic that nobody knew? I think that for you to say, because of the election coming, we need to bring this man to continue. If we were circumspect and we were, you know, thinking ahead of time, we would have worked out a succession plan because this election day was fixed about four years ago. And one of the things you could have done was to have said, since you are retiring, let us set up a kind of special purpose unit, you know, where the man in charge is in charge of election units, but you supervise the person. So when he is leaving, there's already a system in place where that election unit already has somebody on top of him. And during this period, even if the boss is absent, there is already a process that you be able to, because when you say, because of an election that happens in the next one month, you are now giving somebody four years channel elongation. You are asking yourself one, two, three questions. Question number one, what happens to the morale of the people who's time, what would soon be cut short and they will have to exit, you know. And number two, what happens to all the other down line? Are you now going to leave this man alone and retire all the others because they've reached retirement age? How are people going to feel? Are they going to be happy? What's going to be the relationship between the head and the body? What will the body feel like? I think it's, for me, it's not wise. It's not expedient. The Bible says that all things are lawful, but not all things are expedient. This is one area where we just have a leadership where we don't think ahead of time. And for me, it's a no-no. You could have a good excuse, oh election is coming, it's not the best time to change leadership, but for goodness sake, did you not know that four years ago, two years ago, one year ago, six months ago, and what did you do about it? So please, let's start to bring people to governance who believe in cerebral governance and not political governance. There's too much politics in our governance. When it should be, there's too much governance in our politics. And also that we have better politics. I'm actually not moved by that. All right, Ezekiel, on the punch, the main headline is the fear of scarcity. It is very disheartening. Ezekiel, we've talked about this several times over and over and over again in the brain games here and there. And it is just continuing on abated. If man is to sell petrol at 217 NL, the gap is widening, migrants are growing, transport terms first are high, cost of living is on the high, and migrants cannot even buy food stuff. They spent an amount, previously they go to the market the next day, it has actually in a boat tripled as it were. What is the way forward, Ezekiel? The way forward is for us to have a government that is believed. There is too much deceit in our governance. You see, Nigerians are the nicest people to rule or govern or preside over in the whole of this world that I've seen. And I can say with every sense of responsibility because I've traveled, Nigerians are believing, Nigerians are trusting, Nigerians are hopeful, Nigerians are almost, you know, taken for granted by our leaders because of these awesome qualities. All we need is a government that you can believe, that you can trust, that when they say something, you know that they are honest about it. Let's come to this issue of fuel, fuel scarcity, it all comes down to our living fake life. We are trying to sell what we don't have, to give what we don't have. We've not sat down and looked at our finances and looked at our capacities, which is what by the grace of God I intend to bring to the board as a governor, where you are open and transparent with the people. Do you know that you can actually reduce, let me use a very hard word, reduce the pay of the people and the people will accept it? Why? Because you've shown them that the hundred you had, you've shown in the efforts you have made and that it's come down to just 98 on account of which I as a leader, I'm going to let go this and if you can please bear with me for a month, we'll let go this. We use that difference to do this and in the next month we'll come back to where we are and be on a trajectory of going higher and better and the people see you, the people believe you, the people will do anything you want them to do. Now what is the problem on this? Well, they are not doing, there's subsidy, there's no subsidy. The figures of the subsidy, you cannot tell how they cook it up, how they work it up. We are going to spend two, three, three trillion between now and then. How are you spending? The whole thing is shrouded in such mysteries and you know, such you just wonder what is really going on and where there is this speculation and disbelief and distrust. What you have is chaos and that's what we are having today. Do we have fuel? Do we not have fuel? NNPC will tell you, oh we have enough to last us for the next three months and somebody like tell that to the Marines, please go and sit down. Are people hoarding fuel? Are people hoping that the price will rise on account of which they are refusing to sell exactly what is the situation? You can't tell because we are very deceitful governor, you know, the governor's structure. I think Nigerians should really wake up and smell the coffee and there could be no better time than now. It's true, we already have some people on the block. You can't change what we have. At the presidency, we already have those 18 people. At the governor's level, you already have those 18 people on those tickets. You cannot make it 19. You cannot change anymore, but can make the best of the situation. You can manage, yes. Ezekal, I know that you are on your own and I can perceive that you do have respect for the traditional institution. There's one that consents Calabar, which is not far from where you are. The Obong of Calabar re-elected days after sacking by the Supreme Court. I mean, how do you feel about this? A traditional institution having court cases and what have you? There are two things. The first is that we must live in a society that is governed by the rule of law. You cannot take that away from the system, the society, anytime, any day, no matter who you are. Whether you are the head of the traditional institution or you are the president of the federal republic or you were a big man, no matter who you are, everybody is under the law. That's the first thing you put strictly as a fundamental. The second is that the traditional institution like election, we should allow the constituencies involved as much as possible to manage it. That is why I'm against victory in court, as against victory at the polls. Let the victory be at the polls and whoever the people have chosen on a consensus basis, let that person be. If the Obong of Calabar is wanted by his people, let him be. And Obong of Calabar, when you are there, know that there is a law and operate within the ambit of the law, knowing that if you go outside of it, you will get caught. So for me, it's just those two fundamentals. Number one, you're not above the law, nobody is. Number two, let traditional institutions be determined by the people within the constituency in question. When you put the two together, whatever is the decision that comes out, I'm fine by it. All right then, we have to go, but I mean, this question once, it's out of, you know, period where the traditional institution itself was a system that brought peace and stability, you know, to the country and the society at large. I mean, cases were brought to the, you know, the council and the chiefs to settle, rather than the other way, because they had a mechanism to solve the problem. So I'm just worried that it feels like we're evolving, society is becoming more complex. And then that's what we're moving. Yes, it is. And again, I think that the time has come when the traditional institutions must be respected and seen for what they ought to be. And given that latitude, if it pleases God, and I've become the governor of a quai bom state, one of the areas I'm going to look at is making the traditional institutions more effective because people actually obey their kings, their village heads, they trust them, they obey the modern government. So if you create a network, a working relationship, a partnership with the traditional institutions, particularly the village heads, you may work towards a more peaceful environment. Let the traditional institutions not just become ceremonial, they can actually become the bastion for peace and stability in the system. I believe in those traditional institutions. All right. Thank you so much, Mr. Ezekian Aitok, for all your one, you know, the imputes that you have added to off the press. For this matter, we do appreciate your time. Thank you. I am honored. Thank you again. All right. Stay the breakfast and plus TV Africa. We're taking a quick break. We'll come back and look at the electoral act and some questions and clarity that need enters and solutions as it were in a moment. So join us again.