 On Plus Politics today, we talk civic education as we take a look at the advocacy and increased voter participation ahead of 2023's elections. And we'll be looking at the 2023 elections and the challenges ahead for the APC. This is Plus Politics. I am Mary Annacol. People's active participation in elections is one of the key measures of electoral democracy. The lack of interest or apathy in elections tend to undervalue the democratic process and gender mistrust in political institutions and throne on accountable leadership. This is why voter turnout is crucial and an aspect of electoral studies. Nigeria has successfully undergone two decades of uninterrupted democracy. Nevertheless, recent years have shown a trend of civilian engagement in the electoral process declining. There has been conspicuous decline in voter turnout in general elections since 2003, particularly presidential and gubernatorial elections. One of the ways to improve the quality of elections in Nigeria is to increase voter turnout and boost the participation of Nigerian citizens in their own vibrant democracy. The more voters there are, the harder it is for bad actors to taint the democratic process. Joining us live to discuss this is James Ugochuku, the co-convener of Nigeria's civil society situation room and Eugene Abel's executive director, the extra step initiative. Thank you so much, gentlemen, for joining us. Thanks for joining us, Ugo. We're in the main tech before having me in Plus TV. Great. Let's talk about the engagement that's out there. We know that when it's close to campaign season and of course elections, we see more rhetoric, more mudslinging. We see a lot of propaganda, disinformation and misinformation and pressure on all sides, both on political parties and even the voters. But then we hardly really see conversations that should encourage voter turnout and discourage apathy. But let me start by asking, why do you think there's so much voter apathy in Nigeria even now in 2022? Well, thank you for having me once more. When we are looking at voter support, I think we need to look back to where we are coming from, which is the military, the security personnel interrupting our democratic process. If you can recall, we have a very long period of military regime. What military regime gives you is the exclusion of the citizens from the governance process. Nigeria citizens are still yet to come to terms that they are stakeholders in the governance process or that they even have the power to make decisions that affect them with respect to governance and all that. Now, after the transition to democracy in 1999, we have a political class that still have that military mentality and we still have the citizens that still have that military mentality. Now, let me look at the political class for instance now. The political class, because they have military mentality, don't see any reason for an inclusive and participatory democracy with the people. So they tend to do things the way they like, force themselves to power and carry out the governance process the way they didn't fit. And we have the people that still believe that we are still living in the democratic era, so they don't understand what the constitutional rights they have and the question they should be asking the people in governance. So when you bring all this together, you see that the voter party is there. Then if you now look at our electioneering process, it's official now that you started having something that has the semblance of an electoral management body. An electoral management body that has very few, very limited or very few external influence in its dealing. If you look back at 1999 election, 2003 election, 2007 election, 2007 election being the worst election that has ever been conducted in the Nigerian history. To the point that even the president elects them, leads president Umar Musa Yadda during his ceremony. He admitted that the election that brought him to power was grossly flawed. And that's how he set up the popular waste committee. So you see that because the citizens believe that they are vote don't count or they don't have a say in the democratic process, they decide to sit back, take the back seat and watch how the whole thing is going. But I want to change your perspective with respect to citizens participation. Their party is reducing actually based on what you observe in the last couple of elections starting from Mandelberg election in November 2000 and the 21 last year and the FCT election 2023 that happened in February and of course equity and the ocean election. The enthusiasm is increasing. And of course if you're not capital, if you're not capital with the political consciousness that is giving momentum now, citizens are now beginning to see that they have the power to make change the way it is. And that is brought about by the kind of election management we are having now. Normally the use of technology that is now making it very difficult for politicians to manipulate election the way they like. So citizens are now having a glimmer of hope that yes, if I vote, my vote will count. And if I choose a particular candidate, that candidate will be sworn in just as we saw in the ocean and the equity election. And based on that, I think that's what is propelling the citizen to have active interest in what is going on. And I think come 2023 and based on the surge for registration for the PVC and the alignment they are doing behind different political parties and politicians and all that, I think we're going to have a very tremendous turn out when it comes to 2023 general election. Eugene Ables is joining us. He's the director of Extra Step Initiative. Eugene, we're talking about voter enthusiasm here and of course pushing for more voter participation. But we can't also have this conversation without bringing in civil society. We also see that the civic space is saturated with all kinds of civil society organizations but there has been that question mark around how apoliticised or apolitical I beg your pardon, these civil society organizations are because we have also seen and heard civil society organizations declaring support for politicians. How can the rest of society want to get involved in politics if even the guys who are supposed to speak up for the common man seems to be leaning to different kinds of political parties? Yes, thanks for having me and one will say everybody is a political animal whether it be in the family or because politics basically has to do with the allocation of resources. Now, and this is one of the issues where it is one of the reasons why those who are campaigning for a regulator of civil society and non-governmental organizations, one of the reasons that one of the justifications they're putting forward for that regulation I expect that for me I will advise that I think there has to be some form of regulation because in the last six years for economic interest there was an abuse which led to the proliferation of a lot of non-governmental organizations so anything that is not regulated is likely to be abused but the question is now to what extent do you want to regulate before the fear that everybody is concerned about begins to play whereby let government know that it's an opportunity to begin to stifle this platform that enables the ordinary man's voice to be heard and also put regulators in check. So I think it's an issue of the egg or the chicken which came first but like we say that even in the face of a lot of fake borderline system it doesn't mean that they are not competent or original currencies so it is left for we as informed individuals to naturalize the disarm those organizations that are go for, that are apolitical that are doing that just as expected of them at the moment as non-governmental organizations for the benefit of the society. I want to push you father, now Gautrupa made a case that we're seeing more and more active civil civic participation in the space being that more people are getting their PVCs, more people are registering to get involved in the electoral process but I always like to, you know, I was in Annambra, I covered that election the percentage of voter turnout was still nothing close to the number of people who registered for that election and this can be said for several other elections across the country before the end of the year or even the most recent which was Oshun state, there was a great voter turnout but the percentage in itself still was nothing close to the number of registered people now let's talk about the PVC situation INEC did extend the time for the registration to a particular date as soon as that date was announced we saw a lax a lot of people just relaxed and then when it was close to the final day we saw a surge of people to those registration centers and that's one step, INEC has several millions in fact voters cards that people are yet to pick up so again it makes me question how enthusiastic we are about the selection well I mean campaigns are starting on the 28th are we really serious about taking over this civic space and making sure that we're part of the electioneering process are we doing enough and I really don't want you to say Abel that the NOA has its job cut out for it because I do not know if it still exists well concerning the enthusiasm that you have probably felt from social media normally we like it, we like the buzz but it's beyond the thing, how many people can put this to fire I did the piece just like you observed in the last election which you managed to buy what was the non-total number of votes that brought President Buhari to power less than 40% if you come to reverse the 3 million voters which they brag about we only see less than 600,000 people that voted that brought the President Buhari into office now the average excited, enthusiastic provoter who is talking about PVC you ask him do you understand what the Electoral Act is saying he probably does not and he's not interested to do that even though now we have the benefit of Google and information all around us in our hands as you wake up beyond the Bible the first thing you reach is your force now a lot of people are not willing to go beyond that extent and a lot of people are also not willing to pay that price of going to pick up their cards and don't forget before the amendments because they don't know what the rules are saying some people are still doing double registrations and all of those are plain steps and some people believe that they will be able to cause an extension not knowing that the Electoral Act is getting tighter and tighter and if certain things are not done within the timeframe who pay for them they can never be done again it's just like the typical conversation here in the public space where people are saying I let them amend the Electoral Act so that this can happen and you need to remove some we have to go out of our way to remind them that irrespective of the amendments that are made to the Act today it is time bound it is time bad meaning that it cannot take effect onto the next set of elections we like the bust, we like the Jesus but thank God you brought this up we use the opportunity to appeal to them for those who have not already got their cards to go and collect them an opinion poll that was carried out by a newspaper premium times about elections and why people don't really show up to polling units even when they have received their voter's card even when they are eligible to vote let's start with the one from Leigh Goss State we're going to put it up on the screen now apparently people gave all kinds of reasons some said that their votes don't count some says no candidate that I trust or want to vote for some said that the country and the governance in the country the form of governance is bad some said insecurity and violence during election some said they don't even have a PVC and some others said they have no interest in politics and some people said it's stressful but the highest percentage of about 20 something percent went to my vote does not count how do we change this narrative and do you think or rather what role do you think that the leadership and governance trajectory in this country has played in this response by some of these voters I have two people if your father would be pleased oh this question was for Gojuku oh sorry okay you can go ahead okay it's fine if we look back to what I said earlier the long military regime which I call military regime hangover is still on us and that is where government is operated in opacity so a lot of people still don't have that sense of belonging as citizens that they are part of this process and that is what is making them to think that their vote don't count and another reason is the issue of my practices during election proud to know we have ballot boxes being snatched in election which comes to the other respondents that say that they don't go to polluting because of insecurity then we look at politicians manipulating the election from the coalition process in fact in situation of 2011 we released a statement saying that the weakest link in our electoral process is the coalition process and then now that we have IMEC introducing the technology to fill in that gap I think that has been removed and if we check the last election we had you know SHU and KTA states we have more people turning out than before although even if we check the internet based on your previous election the internet is not the same percentage but in terms of number is more because when you are talking about percentage is a function of how many percentage or which number you are calculating so now when it comes to 2023 yes that's a fair is okay and that is where all the rational stick would need to come into play you say that yes we talk something about anyway of course it's not only anyway that will be the direct beneficiary of electoral process the media will be direct beneficiary the civil society will be direct beneficiary the church, the mosques and all that stick with us are part of the people that are going to benefit so it behooves all of us to take this message of galvanizing people to come out and vote to the cities to the deepest grassroots communities for them to come out and vote given that IMEC has made it almost impossible now for elections to be manipulated because we have a system the bimodal voter's accreditation system the pivus machine is being used from accreditation to the coalition process and the transmission of result electronically to IRF voters so with this now we discover that there is a little room for much practices you can't rule out my practices entirely but there is little room for my practices and this is where citizens vigilance comes into play citizens understand exactly what they need to do what they need to watch out for and how to respond to certain scenarios during election I think that will help us in having the credible election that we are expecting so yes the statistics came out the way it is and the good thing is that we have close to four months also to disabuse demands of all these young people that the game have already changed and of course it can be a serious part of this process as we are moving on finally Eugene before we wrap up because we are out of time for the case of eradicating my practice or bringing it down to a bare minimum on the path of INEC and the electoral act there has been a story making rounds about the fact that some of the people who have been nominated by Mr. President to be commissioners in INEC might be people who have been appointed by the APC or people who have run for office already within the APC now this is also a cost for consent how do we also make sure that this does not put a dampener on the boss that you have been talking about in closing yeah first of all let us thank those who have brought this to public attention and why we are making the agitation on social media I think it is time for people to carry a class action delegate once gather evidence against these people and approach the courts immediately there is no time for us unless at 20 days time the campaigns will begin yes immediately we just get an order of mandemars ordering our courts to secure relief for them to be excused from but they should not even go for cleric so we don't waste time with them it is a straight forward thing the Executive Director the Executive Director the Executive Director is the Co-Combina Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room I want to thank you gentlemen for being part of this conversation thank you for having us thank you all for staying with us we will take a quick break when we return we will be discussing the 2023 elections and the challenges ahead of the APC we will be right back