 Welcome back. We set for a first major conversation right here on the breakfast. Now, with barely 48 hours to the conduct of the governorship and state houses of assembly elections, as you well know, the Court of Appeal in Nigeria on Wednesday refused to restrain the Independent National Electoral Commission from reconfiguring the bimodal voter accreditation system, Biva's machines in the ruling delivered by a three-member panel led by Justice Joseph E. K. It held that restraining the commission would constrain INEC from conducting the March 11 polls. The Court in a unanimous decision held that stopping the electoral body from reconfiguring Biva's would adversely affect Sunday's elections. In fact, what the Court said was that it would amount to tying INEC's hands. In an application, PTAO B, presidential candidate of Labour Party, had sought an order of court to restrain INEC from tampering in their words with the information embedded in the bimodal voter accreditation system machines until the due inspection is conducted and certified through copy of them issued. Well, later that night INEC postponed the governorship elections and state assembly elections slated for 11th of March, till the 18th of March, saying it would take the commission five working days to reconfigure the Biva's used for the 176,974 polling units where voting will take place for the election. The Court therefore ordered INEC to, it also ordered INEC to allow the applicants inspect and carry out digital forensic examination of all the electoral materials used in the conduct of the elections as well as avail them of the CTC's of results after fiscal inspection of Biva's machines. We're glad to say joining us to look at the implications of this for the ongoing litigations over the results of the presidential elections. Mr Biodun, show me is a political analyst, C. Janssen's Vazum in Ligas. Mr, show me good morning to you. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you for having me. All right, with this ruling by the Court of Appeal, basically saying that INEC can reconfigure the by motor, voter accreditation system machines, do you feel that there is, there is, it will affect negatively the chances of the legal team of Pitalby and the legal team of Atikobuoka establishing that they may have had a different, better result in the elections. Will they affect them negatively? I don't think so. If you see what was filed in court and the injunction granted to Pitalby, basically we will never be able to hold the governatory elections, you know, for at least a minimum of three months. The reason is this, you have 90 days to process, you know, the cases through the courts. We have over one hundred and seventy-seven thousand beaver's machine and therefore to even go through this one hundred and seventy-seven thousand beaver's machine, their lawyers cannot or no, no number of forensic experts, they bring in, will successfully complete that, you know, within the time allowed by law to resolve the issue. So basically what it means is the governatory will be able and no other election can take place in the country on to Pitalby's case is resolved. Of course that cannot be acceptable to the whole country and, in any case, what will be lost? What is beaver's machine about? It's simply a database. It's a database to verify, you know, the authenticity or the credentials of whoever is appearing to collect nomination papers. The nomination papers, no, the ballot papers, you know, were actually, the process of voting was actually Okay, Mr. Showme, your network is interfering. Can you hear me, sir? Beaver's was used for it. Beaver's was not used to tally the result. What Beaver's was used for was simply for transmission. And so the information transmitted to Beaver's or recorded by Beaver's will be stored in the back end server. I think that would meet the needs of the litigants. They have a right and they have a duty to make sure that the evidence which they hope to rely on is not tampered with. That is correct. But the end of the day, can that be done in a different way? That is because by the end of the old information, in the back end part, in a way that to not be tampered with for all the source of the material being stored is from ECA. And if it's from ECA, they have already issued to all the party to the election, including to the security services. So it is easier to check whether there are violations or infractions or some people have tampered with it. I think that's basically the only issue. If the court allow INE, we will be in a situation where for the next three months, we cannot have a gobernatorial election. Governors will have finished their terms. Speakers will have finished their terms. And many states will be without government legal government in a federation. That cannot be accepted. But I'd like you to speak to this. Espat said that INE may have been forced to shift the polls. That's what some people are saying. Because the process of reconfiguring of the beavers takes real time. And so the excuse that you need like five days to reconfigure the process is false. What are your thoughts on this? In my view, we have 177,000 beavers machine located in different parts of the country. As high court had at least 10,000 people to do this, the way who can I make assure the whole country that look, we have 10,000 people to move around and get all these things done within 24 to 48 hours. No, that is the truth of the matter. You need to look at how many. Yes, it didn't take a long time to do one. The reconfiguring, I'm sure, will not take more than an hour for power. But do we have all of them in one place? No, they are all in different parts of the country. And people have got to a right now to configure the best part in terms of recruiting people to do it. Already they have some people to do that. And they would have to bring them in to get them done. So in reality, the five days to me is not unreasonable. They can get it done four to five days, but not in two days. Okay. Mr. Showmey, what some supporters of the two leading opposition parties and two leading presidential opposition presidential candidates, what they're afraid of is that the information stored on the beavers could be tampered with. Now, you said indeed that, yes, you're rightly so, as said by INEC's lawyer, that the data on the beavers is safe. They even saw an affidavit to that effect. And that they are uploading everything at the back end server. But Mr. Showmey, as we speak, from EC8A that was meant to be electronically transmitted by simply taking the beavers and just taking a snapshot and uploading it to the INEC IRA. Not all the forms still today have been uploaded to the IRA as we speak, not all. So what back end server are they talking about? If till now, not all the form EC8As have been uploaded to the IRA for public viewing. That's number two, the irregularities with the collation of results. And the broad daylight robbery witnessed in some part of the country where voters cast their votes and then they saw different results. It's cast a doubt on the sincerity or the motives of the independent national electoral commission. People don't trust them. So when you hear the OB legal team using the word tampering with the device, people think that INEC may have sinister motives before the elections. They never had, INEC talk about reconfiguration until there will be an article legal team's approach to presidential elections petition court to ask for leave of court to inspect these materials. And then they had these people talking about reconfiguration. So this is what may be driving the suspicion and the agitation, sir. Yes, you are correct. If we go back into history, since we've been having elections in Nigeria, almost all elections have been subjected to criticisms, one way or the other, by whoever is losing or the losers of elections. We have that track record. The most widely accepted election, not a subject to criticisms or controversy, I think was the election of President Johnathan, when Johnathan succeeded in Yeraguar. And that's probably the only one I can think of. So it is normal for politicians or those who lose elections to complain about processes. The right thing which they have done in many cases because we have seen, we saw what happened in Oshun. You know, it's over these beavers also, when Oyetola was not happy that he lost the election, he went to court to challenge the issue of beavers and the court found in his favor. And that's a good reference point on beavers. You know, the court found in his favor to the extent that government dedicated to appeal that decision. So the issue... By the way, even the issues with that, because they said, sorry, sir, sorry, apologies. There are even issues with that because what we, the complaint there is that they are conflicting printouts from INEC, from the INEC database, that what the other party got is different from what... And then INEC came out to say it was incomplete. So you have some issues there as well. And if I have to add to what I said earlier, the accreditation data is on the beavers to know how many of the registered voters came to vote. Correct. When you look at beavers, beavers is meant to do only one particular purpose, which is to be, you know, it's succeeded, what do they call it? And the other card we are using. And the purpose is to store information to identify candidate because in the past, when we have problems, people complain, they don't have their PVC and mounting or the other. They are allowed to use film incidents from. And politicians perfected the heart of using the incident from. So being able to vote totally with the number of registered voters, not number of accredited voters. So beavers is meant, you know, to eliminate this fraud. To that extent, beavers successfully did that because it became impossible to vote without going through using beavers for accreditation purposes. And in any case, the electoral committee declared that what happened in a mood of being... It spent on the penalty. Why in the FFA to adhere to that? I don't know. A situation where you have 57,000 registered voters and one party was given 53,000, the other 13,000. Even if you don't have the rest, it's clear that there's overvoting. And the losses, that result should be annulled. But that result was not annulled. It was added to Labour's result. That was how Labour managed to win Legos. These are the facts which cannot be contributed. Go and look at a mood of his result. You know, so the fact of the matter is politicians will complain, APC will complain, Labour will complain, all of them will complain. But what's the purpose of beavers? Beavers is meant for accreditation. The idea of using beavers for transmission was simply an INEC directive in his own manual, INEC election manual. It is not the directive of the law. If you look at the permissions of the law, particularly, you know, the electoral high section 60, read the whole of section 60 very, very well. You realize that it has prescribed until 60 subsection 5. It prescribed clearly that INEC would decide the means how the results should be transmitted or transferred. They use the word transfer there. So, you find that in the manual. That doesn't mean INEC should not comply with his own guidelines. INEC should comply with his own guidelines. By a situation where the backbone server owner, and I'm referring to the company providing, you know, the backbone technology to support INEC activities. Claiming that they receive over 200 attacks, please try and contact Galaxy Bagu. Get some information. At the appropriate time, after the election, more information will be held in the public. If INEC is on that enormous strain to retain or to preserve the integrity of anything stored, you know, in the server, then INEC has a right to issue the guidelines, you know, to review it. And that's basically what I think upon that situation. So, the issue of the results, the results of the number of accredited voters were already known at the point of correlation, because they would look at the beaver's results and everybody has taken the information down. It's already only from ECHA, which has been signed by the electoral upside. So the number of accredited voters already known. We can always cross check that with whatever information INEC stores in the back end server. That is the fact of the matter. Yes, INEC, look, we are in Nigeria. We have simply signed in officers doing what they are not trained to do by INEC. We are Nigerians. Politicians will always try and corrupt the system. But the bottom line is the court has to decide what is right from what is not wrong, using all their very good and I think that's the way to go. Still on the issue of the beavers, INEC has rejected Labour Party's request to witness the beavers reconfiguration. As a matter of, you know, facts, they are saying that they are faulting the commission of claims of backing data retrieved from the beavers without the presence of independent observers and political parties. I'd like to ask you what you think of the position. Would you be wrong to have, you know, agents of various political parties or some observers to, you know, look at the entire process of reconfiguring? It's a very complex situation. It depends on the number of beavers smashing those candidates or all the candidates or whichever candidate is applying. I'm trying to avoid being specific on the particular party. The problem is this. When we demand and say you want to check whatever information is there, the other parties in that election to have a right to be there. If that is what you're going to have to tend that, they all have to agree that that information is from that source. It's not from a different source. Through this happen, there will be no time to conduct the appeal hearing on the presidential election. There will be no time. Time will be out. They have only its time bound. So we've seen an example of that before when Governor Abaseke of a Dostay had filed a case report and eventually it was, they couldn't conclude it because Iran at that time allowed to determine those cases. And that was our Abaseke, Abaseke won and became the governor. So if you're not careful, we may not even allow the judiciary to properly look into this because many of those cases will be time bound. They will run out of time. But it is also right. INEC is also right to insist that all the parties have to be there. Otherwise, each party will apply. INEC will have to keep making separate arrangements when in reality, if all of them are there, they could easily ascertain that the information is from that source and that would clear all the matter, rather than exacting pressure on any individuals. So the reconfiguration of the beavers, if that's going to happen, the entire process INEC is going to embark on, do you think that would you classify that as being transparent if this is going to be done without anybody observing? INEC is supposed to be independent electoral body. All the political parties are partisan initial. So INEC is expected to be independent of the partisan political amongst the political parties. What we need INEC to ensure is that this information is stored in the backend server correctly and even if they want that to be supervised, I don't have an issue with it. But in the process of reconfiguring, there is no way INEC can guarantee that political parties will trust that. I will tell you why. Now, will the political parties appoint people to go with INEC to different places to reconfigure an equipment and upload new data information into it? I don't think that is practical in reality. That would not be practical. Number two, would INEC be willing to bring all those machines into a particular warehouse to get them reconfigured and they need all the political parties. Don't forget 18 political parties to actually be there to see how they configure in it. No, that's not what they want to do. It has little or nothing to do with them. It is basically about INEC getting the machines ready for the gubernatorial elections. They have already used it for the presidential elections and the results should be transferred into the INEC backend server. So the idea of reconfiguring the machines to be useful for the next election, I don't think political parties have any role in that process. It is for INEC to do that internally and get them ready for the gubernatorial elections. Mr. Showmeed, are you worried to any extent about the sincerity of INEC through this process, looking at the way the results were rewritten by officials of the electoral empire, including coalition officers. In different local governments and different local governments and worlds across the country, polling unit results sheets were basically rewritten. A few different parties, not just one party, but a few different parties, and the reaction of Nigerians in major cities in the country to the results announced, saying they could not recognize those results. I mean, if you conduct some forensic research, they also defy all logic in some parts of the country. Are you worried about the sincerity of INEC through this process of reconfiguring the beavers ahead of the governorship elections? Well, to be honest, I have seen quite a number of results, which to me are questionable. Some of the results seem to have been changed one way or the other. Those are the ones I found on social media. Well, social media is not the judiciary. They're not the courts, until the court accepts that these results were changed. Then that is where we... Mr. Showmeed, I'm asking about your personal concern now, sir. Seeing... And I'm not talking about... Mr. Showmeed, sorry, sir. I'm not talking about social media pictures. I'm talking about verified party agents' result sheets that are in my position, in our position, and are available to anyone who knows the party agent. And very, very clear handwritten manipulation or handwritten changes to the results. We have incidents or instances where local government coalition officers went missing for days, only to appear with results that people could not recognize. And INEC accepted them citing the law. Very questionable results in different parts of the country. We're not talking about the conduct of the police or political talks. We're talking about conduct of INEC officials and the results that were released. I'm saying, are you concerned about the... I'm not talking about courts here. I'm talking about you, sir. Are you concerned about the sincerity of INEC in this process, talking about what happened following the 25th of February presidential and national assembly elections? Yes, everybody needs to be concerned about infractions committed in any election. It is difficult to see any election in this country without infractions. Some major of infractions always happen. But that is worrying. Quite a lot of them should have been wiped off. Of course, we know the human angle. We are all Nigerians. Some people attempted one thing to facilitate, begin one way or the other. And yet they are hard-dock staff of INEC. I don't think the main INEC, the commission itself, you know, it's involved in whatever kind of infractions there are. But when you look at those who frame the law, it is quite clear that we anticipated that there will be some level of infractions. And that is why the term substantial compliance with the electoral law is used. In this case, if the substantial compliance with the electoral law and the INEC regulations, then the election is okay as far as the law is concerned. But personally speaking, I still think we need to do a little bit more to clean up the system so that even the infractions identified so far, you know, will never reoccur again. I mean, it's quite very worrying because it's, you know, you can have problems in four local governments which will undermine the credibility of any elections. And that is not what we want. We want 700 and we have 774 local governments. So if you have problems in 10, 20, that is not, it does not affect the result of the election because of the issue of substantial compliance. But while we expect people in that local government, the affected local governments to appeal, they will continue feeling cheated. So this is why I am bothered that we need to do a little bit more than what INEC has done so far to clean up a system to prevent a situation where individual, you know, can change results. And the only way to do this is by prosecuting the offenders. We have to ensure that those who can't part with results are prosecuted. But let me say, show me, show me, show me INEC getting full of the law. So you're talking about prosecution offenders. Show me INEC getting full of the law by uploading the presidential results in multiple cases. And it was observed that after the House of Representatives and senatorial results were uploaded, the machines could not work. They stopped accepting the presidential results. That's just one aspect. I'm not talking about changing of results by coalition officers. And then the INEC returning officer put at the state and national level saying, I can do nothing about it, which is a lie. But looking at the refusal of INEC to follow the law, to upload electronically the results as contained in the Electoral Act 2022, which is law. No, that's not the law. Go ahead and read section 60. Very, very well. Even read section 60 in conjunction with section 64 of the Electoral Act. That is not the law. Show me section 60 subsection what, please. I can read it out for you. I have it in front of me. What subsection are we talking about, sir? What subsection are we talking about? I'll read it. I'll start from subsection one. It says that the presiding officer shall, after counting the votes at the polling unit, enter the votes scored by each candidate in a form to be prescribed by the commission. As the case may be, we know what that is. Number two, subsection two. The form shall be signed. I'm just going to skip that. It's about signing and stamping the form. It says, three, it says the presiding officer shall give the, well, it says, it doesn't skip that, too. Subsection five says the presiding officer shall transfer the results, including the total number of accredited voters and the results of the ballot in the manner prescribed by the commission. This talks about electronic transfer of the results. Yes, but it's in a manner. We know the manner, Mr. Show Me. That's exactly what I'm saying to you. And we know what the manner is. This is what we all clamour for, electronic transmission of votes. And it is clearly stated that you must, you shall transfer the results, including the total number of accredited voters and the results you shall, right there. In the manner prescribed by the commission. And what is the manner, Mr. Show Me? What is the manner, sir? What is the manner? What manner are we talking about here? Exactly. You know what led to this. You said that was the law, and I said that was in the law. No, but the law is clear. It says that you need to transfer the results. At that point, it must be transferred. And we know that the commission has, in its guidelines and regulations released in June 2022, that they will transfer using the beavers. This is what Nigerians fought for. They cannot agree with me that that is INA guidelines. It's in INA guidelines, not the law. The law says you should transfer. It's talking about electronically. You should transfer electronically. So INAQ will have to now decide how, what if they come up with a new technology tomorrow. At that point, Mr. Show Me, this is the law. I'm reading black and white. No, I'm just going to start from 60, subsection 5, which clearly stated that INAQ will determine the mode of transfer. Okay. So Mr. Show Me, what happens if INAQ does not transfer the results? What happens? Have they not broken the law? INAQ will transfer the result on the, in my view, you know, that is what the court has to decide. No, but you were saying the court has to decide. INAQ will try. It is in black and white, sir. Okay. I'll give you, I'll just give a scenario. We voted. They did everything prescribed in subsection 1 or section 6. Up to section 5, you transferred the House of Reps results. You transferred the senator results. And then for the presidential, you said no. Have you broken the law or not? No, you have not. You don't understand. Let me explain it to you. When at the state level is where the correlation of all elections, apart from presidential exist, that at the stage where you can object at the correlation level, which is the state level, to any results, all those have been done, you can include them. For the purpose of presidential election, the correlation done at the state level is not with the returning officer. The chief returning officer of the federal is the returning officer for presidential election. And that is done in Abuja. It is only when, after that has been done in Abuja, going through the processes prescribed in section 60, 1 to 5, that INAQ can now say they're uploading. And that says... This is talking about section 60. It talks about the polling unit. It talks about the polling unit. And if the agency refuses to allow its workers, upload results, transfer results to it, then the law has not... Because there was no transfer, you need to transfer the results before you leave the polling unit. The law does not allow you, so let me just show you. The law does not allow you to transfer them at the award level or that is where collation is done. But at the polling unit, you don't do collation. You get the results, you sign the forms, you stamp the forms, and you transfer the results to the ward. The ward now takes it from the different units and collates and sends it to like Mahmood said, to the local government. There are three levels of collation. Okay, so you don't transfer results at a collation point. You transfer it at the point where you count the votes and you sign the form in the presence of the party agents. Now what you're saying is the law is clear, Mr. Xiaomi. The law is clear. At the voting point, at the polling unit, you transfer. As understood by you, as understood by me, the law is also clear. Look, one thing which is very clear, which you cannot dispute, is at what stage? Where do you have the returning officer for the presidential election? Is the chairman of the commission, go and read the law? The third chairman is based in Abuja, so you cannot collate the results with the returning officer, not based in Abuja. He's based in Abuja. I mean, we're not talking about returning officer here. We are talking about presiding officer. You are the one who brought Section 60, sir. It doesn't talk about returning officer. It talks about presiding officer and that is found in the polling unit. And Section 60 is clearly, basically focused on the polling unit, on the polling unit. That is where the transfer takes place, sir. Polling unit. And if you don't do that at the polling unit, you have broken the law. You have not done what it says you should do. I don't have anything about that. You are standing logic with what we're doing. Voting takes place at the polling unit. Yes. And right at the polling unit, once the results have been compiled, INEC decided it, or INEC will decide the mode of transfer. I think it's what you read out. And what is the mode of transfer? What is the mode of transfer? Okay, let me show you. But in Section 60, let me show you Section 60. In Section 60, sir, sir, just a quick question. Just a quick question. In Section 60, are you excited? Where is the transfer meant to be done? At what point? If you allow me, Section 60, Subsection 5 clearly states that the mode of transfer will be prescribed by INEC. Where is the transfer meant to be done, sir? Where? That is what I'm saying to you. The mode of transfer will be done by INEC. Where is, sir? I asked again for the last time. At what point, at what level, at what location should the transfer be done? You know, you are trying to pigeonhole. Sir, I'm asking you a simple question. I'm not pigeonholing you. You are on Zoom, joining me from your board. I'm here. I can't pigeonhole you, sir. At what point, under Section 60, should the transfer be done? Where, sir? You are a very aggressive interviewer. You are not allowing me to answer the question. You have behavior like... Please go on. Please go on. I yield. I yield. Please show me I yield. If you are the guests, you should allow... Please show me I yield. You can answer. I yield. I yield, sir. I am not the guest. You are the one interviewing me against me without giving me room to explain it. Please go on. Apologize. Apologize. Please go on. Apologize. So that's your question, sir. No, sir. I disagree. I disagree. Mr. Showme, I know what you're doing. You're trying to turn the tables on me. I have asked you a simple question. Everybody watching has seen I'm asking you a simple question, sir. You know, so you can answer. You can answer. I just asked a question. If you are asking me a question... No, sir. You're going to show me. You're going beyond... You're going beyond what we are doing here, sir. You have to show me. I asked you a simple question. Messy, sir, I asked you a simple question. I have not pigeonholed you. It's a simple... I just said... My only crime... My only crime... Mr. Showme, you can't attack me, sir. You can't. My only crime was to ask you at one point, the section 60, which I have in front of me here, okay, says we should do the transfer. That's why I'm asking you and you refuse to answer. How am I pigeonholing you? How am I being a professional? You can't see how aggressive you are, you know, with me. No, I'm sorry about that. You have to show me... You have to tell me to express myself. So that's the problem. You have to show me. At this point, I think we have to let it go. We're really out of time. Okay, thank you. And we do appreciate you joining us. I appreciate your thoughts on the show this morning. We look forward to having this conversation. As we, you know, inch closer to cast a vote on the 18th of March, if you haven't gotten the message already, you should get it. We don't have any elections tomorrow being the 11th of March, but up until the 18th of March, it will be important. We stay guided and let's just stay calm and see how all of these pants are. Once again, thank you for showing me for being part of the show. Thank you, Mr. Showme. We have to move on for our next topic. Merci. We'll be right back. We'll take a break. When we come back, we'll discuss the under 20 African Championships and the 14th of the flying eagles. And of course, we'll also look at women in sports as we mark world international women. Stay with us.