 Welcome to the Breakfast and Plus TV Africa. This is the second conversation. We stay with the confirmation, Senate confirmation of seven nominees appointed by President Mohammad Abu-Hawri as National Commissioners. And the Senate also confirmed Roda Agumiz, who has been accused of being a member of the APC as a National Commissioners South of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC. You have different persons. Well, a very major issue is the fact that the Human Rights Rights Association of Nigeria said that the civil society organization found the document proving that Gumiz is a cat-carrying member of the ruling party. We'll be looking at what the role of INEC commissioners and the implication of having a party member as part of the committee would mean for the 2023 elections. Is there anything that can be done? Having to make sense of all of this is Ezeko Yaituk. He's a public affairs analyst. Once again, Ezeko Yaituk is good to have you join us. So blessed to be with you a second time today. Thanks for having me. All right. Thank you so much Ezeko for making out time to be part of the show. So let's get straight to it now. The Human Rights, Human Rights Rights Association of Nigeria had petitioned and made a petition through the Senate President Ahmed Lawan. And the issue is about rather Gumiz being a party member, a cat-carrying member of the all-progressive Congress. So the question here is how come the committee, the Senate Committee on INEC did not get the petition? You know, some of these things actually find it difficult to know where to start. There is a party known as a PDP that is in the house. They are supposed to be the main opposition party. They don't seem to have this strategic group that is able to be proactive and get things done. Now it took a human right body to send a petition and then the Senate President is saying, well, I didn't see it because they've gone ahead and confirmed this person. I think the last option is a court action because if this person is confirmed as a cat-carrying member and one of the conditions understandably of being a national commissioner is neutrality, they are expected to be relatively neutral and look at the debt on that card unless they can show that that card is forged. That is 2021, which is recent. 2021 is less than a year ago because that's March if I'm to go by it and this is 2022, we're just entering February. So it's less than a year ago. And as a time that the nominations were being made, they were not done before, you know, it's been on the card for a long time. It means that she had probably even just registered, you know, to be a member of the party, then the nomination was made. And there must have been a reason for her to go as a professor to go and register in the party at that time. There must have been understandings. There must have been things. I don't even know how he got about, but the fact is that it is evident except she can say that that documentation was forged, you know, but then in her constituency, they are PDP members. I know the way that parties operate, you as a party, you need to have some people in the other party who feed you with information. I mean, it's done everywhere. So when this was done, PDP ought to have irrefutable evidence against her and then present this to the National Assembly. And if that fails, proceed to the court because if you're a party member, you have flunked the laws and the court can actually remove her. So I mean, this is a concern. The concern here is whether, because first of all, we have the human rights rights association making a petition that the Senate is saying that they are not in the know. Of course, they got only one petition from Tarabah that talked about the fact that it's time for Tarabah to produce a particular zone and what a view. That's the petition that they're saying that they had and they did not get the petition as regards Roda, Gumus, being a party, you know, a card carrying member of the All Progressive Congress. So the question is, with a democracy and the issue of checks and balances, should the Senate, should the committee, I mean, there's the Senate Committee on INEC, not have a mechanism to check even before a petition has been sent to ensure that those who have been nominated, you know, meet the criteria according to the law, the stipulation of the law. I mean, that's the question I'm asking. Should the Senate be waiting for a petition to be sent or they should do their due diligence as is expected by the law? If you know how the Senate is composed, before you can go into lawmaking, there are several statutory bodies that are put and there are certain provisions that are made for every senator to have informed knowledge on every issue. And these are being paid for by the taxpayers in the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Now, these people really don't, I won't say they don't understand what they are there for. A lot of them do, but we have not really come to a point where every senator goes there with the mindset of going to make laws in the larger interest of the generality of the people of this country. There is this mindset of partisanship as they get into the office because everything has to be done in a way that it favors them for the next election. That's just their mindset, their default mindset. So what's going on is that a PC looks at itself and they say, look, how can we gain a strategic advantage? Let us be the ones to nominate the INEC chairman. Let us be able to nominate all the principal officers so that if push comes to shove, we'll be able to give them, you know, activate the second arm of their strategy, okay, which is what usually referred to us in Nigeria as the hidden agenda. So they have that rule one, rule two, game one, game two, portion one, portion two, they have that clean back up. Politicians are extremely good at their game. They know what we are doing. The people that are the losers, are we the masses that are expecting a dog, the meow, or a cat to bark? We don't seem to know why these people will sell their soul to get into the national assembly or to get elected. That conversation needs to be held sometime. But for now, the bottom line is that these people are looking at, okay, let me tell you something. In 2015, we said there was a server and all of a sudden, there was this controversy, was there a server, was there not a server? If there was an independent person in the minds of Nigerians, they would have been sure of what the true position was because up till now, I really don't know what happened because while some people say there was a server, others will say they didn't have the enabling law to allow us to use that server where if we were to use the records from it, it would nullify whatever we were doing. Those things, we haven't come to a point where we have this independent electoral body and the part of independence comes from even in the election or nomination processes of the people that get in there. Why should somebody that is seen as outright partisan, why would the Senate not know about it? I believe they know about it. I believe that if that person was a PDP member, definitely they would have said, yeah, this is a partisan person. On the other hand, since the game of interest has defined politics, I do not know where to put the blame, whether it is PDP aspect or APC aspect of the Senate that could turn a blind eye, because that was one of them, or PDP, that's supposed to be a position that should have shattered themselves' hearts that there was somebody that was a partisan person that was being nominated and even on the floor of the house, they would stand up and say, we'd rather stay the workout and they would bring the evidence and show where were the PDP members. Where were PDP members? It's called a game of interest, so I do not know to what extent I want to blame the APC, but I think I put the blame squarely on the doorsteps of a PDP. Not only did they not bring out this person, it was brought up by the civil society. But Mr. Etik and I, I understand the angle. I mean, you have put out a very valid argument right there. I understand the proposition that you're coming from, the fact that you have an opposition party who should play the role. But let's look at the fact that Mr. President himself and on the premise and the perception that, you know, he gave Nigerians and Nigerians had about him, one should think that the president should know, you know, about the peasants, the category of peasants, even if there were going to be suggestions, we can just, you know, throw it out away. Mr. President over time has been described as a man of integrity. And so you begin to question where the integrity lies at this point in time. But let's also look at this now, because you have talked about the nomination process, and we know that that's solely, you know, rested on the president and that's on the executive arm of government. Should we be talking about amending the laws to take the powers away from the president in terms of nomination to the judiciary or maybe another arm of government? Yes. Two things. First is that Nigerians really don't know why our democracy is extremely expensive. One of the reasons is that there are so many bodies that are attached to the executive office, which is for good, is to ensure that they take what we call informed decision. Mr. President has every apparatus at his disposal to be able to run checks on a checklist of everybody to be appointed. But on several occasions, you see Mr. President appointing someone that they say is dead. And you just ask yourself, who are the people working with their several departments have been privileged to work with several governors within the presidency as a different subject. And I know all these things that are there, your special advisor on this, each of them even has certain arms that help them to do due diligence and things like that. So the question is, where is Mr. President in all these matters? Ezekiel, that's a good question. Let's leave it at that. I'm sure that we will continue this conversation on that note. Where is Mr. President in all of this? Thank you so much for your time. We really have to go now because time is not our friend. We appreciate your time this morning on the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. All right. And that's the size of the conversation on the breakfast. It has been two hours of great talk and I hope you enjoyed every bit of it. If you missed out on any part of the conversation, then it's all right to follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, who are plus DB Africa and plus DB Africa lifestyle. If you do subscribe to our YouTube channel, I invest here before have a fantastic day.