 We're glad to know you're still there. This is Plus Politics. And on this segment, former president, Lucia Gumobasanjo, has said that the 2023 election must be a turning point for the country, saying he is in support of a Soudana becoming the next president. Obasanjo said this on Saturday when the leadership of the IPEC's social-cultural group in Tiv Benworth State, Mzor, paid him a visit at his Lucia Gumobasanjo Presidential Library penthouse residence in a Biokutawgun state capital. The former president, who was conferred with the title of a great warrior of Tiv Land by the socio-political group, said if Nigeria is ready to get it right in 2023, elections should be a turning point. Obasanjo's special assistant on media, Ken De Akiyemi, in a statement said the former president enjoined Nigerians to take farming seriously. That's another point. Obasanjo, who was responding to the president-general chief, Iobi A.R., said Nigeria must be restored to what God has created it to be. There was also the issue of full-any headers, attack on Tiv Land and position on the Nigerian power, sharing formula, and so much more. Joining us to discuss this is Mr. Charles O'Too, a political analyst. Glad to have you on the program, Mr. O'Too. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Good evening. Good evening. Mr. O'Too, former president of Lusiegwon Obasanjo has admonished Nigerians. What's your take on this admonition? Let's start from there. It's well-thought-out because, like the former president pointed out, Obasanjo has shown he's a statesman in the real sense of the word, statesman. For all his past, he could be forgiven as the only former president who is vocal about Nigeria getting it right in the 2023 elections. And for all intents and purposes, this comment by the former president should be taken very seriously, especially by the youths. The 2023 election before Nigerians is not the normal election. It could have been the normal election if the electoral reforms that has been enabled by the Divas and all the credits and the possibilities that have come with it hadn't come. So as a statesman, that admonition by President Obasanjo is well-thought-out and it is in the best interest of this nation, particularly the youths, to take it very seriously because it is the official that is at stake. But do you think Nigerians are ripe for this kind of choices that he's asking of us? Because over the years, people in Nigeria have been voting along ethnic lines, along party lines, along lines, whatever lines they are. But this time, he's asking us to do it not because of our emotions, not because of sentiments, but because of patriotism, if I may put it that way. Do you think we're ripe enough to do that? Have we been educated enough? Because I'm including all of us that are Nigerians and not the political class. So are you sure we are ripe enough, educated enough, informed enough to make those decisions based on something else other than emotions? Thank you very much. I would take this question in two parts. The first is to give a background when the Labour Party movement started. If you watch, you'll see that the table appears to have died down, which means ethnicity is not coming in, religion is not coming in, money politics is not coming in and generally too, emotions are now overriding the decisions or what we call the premodal influence or interest of individuals in government or as regarding the 23 elections generally as it were. But one thing that is certain is that as a statesman or passenger has made this comment knowing that all that there is, like I pointed out, through the reform of the Electoral Act to guarantee us to marshal us for the decision is already in place. So I think we are ripe. Why do I say so? If you go through the pages of the Electoral Act, if you take time to go through like some of us have done, you will find out that a lot of things that used to be the bottlenecks surrounding our elections have been taken off almost completely overtly from the system. It's been eliminated. All we need now is the rallying willpower of the people to insist that look, this time we are not just going to vote, we are going to vote to redefine our situation. Look at it this way. If you saw what I made, I shared on social media, it was shared parallel social media, I saw it and I also shared it. If you know that a pack of rice, for instance, because it's the season for rice and everybody is campring for it, even the ones with stones are being believed now and traded over the place. Because of what? If you know that the price has soared from just about 16,000 Naira to a whopping 45,000 or 30,000 Naira under both, you agree with me that anybody buying rice in this season is not buying it, is not going to get the deduction because he's a member of any political party, is not going to get the deduction because he's a supporter of one religion or one religious group or another. He's going to get the same 46,000 Naira that a pack of rice, a full bag of rice goes for. What has led to this? Anybody who bought fuel in 2014, that was 2014 December, eight years ago, exactly. We know that at 187 people were shouting, now you carry 400 Naira or 350 or 300 Naira in your pocket, you're even looking for the fuel to buy. We read reports of people hooking fuel as if they're hooking gala in Lagos. And these are all signs of the best form of leadership that Nigeria has been reduced to. Nobody's in charge of anything, nobody's in control of anything. The president remains the minister of petroleum that is unaccountable to the masses but accountable to only himself. So if you put all these indices together, you have the ample opportunity to use the PVC and the electron and to correct these anomalies. Why, what other thing does Nigeria's require to show that the system, the reforms in the system have mustured them enough and ripened them to navigate the process of the 2020 elections looking not just at the presidential seat but across the United States of the Federation. You look at the governors that were blind in the last eight years, you see that is a sharp decline to what was in the last eight years before they came on board in 2015. Why do I say so? Look at the trade blame, the blame, the blame trade is going on between the president and the governors. The governors, the presidents say, oh, you expanded the resources of the country, we gave you money to build people, you went and started building flyovers, airports and all of that. You cost poverty to increase and the governors are putting the blame back to the president. In all of this, who are the people toyed with? The average me and you who goes to the market, the ordinary market to buy a yam, to buy rice at 6,000 Naira, to buy fuel at a whopping 300 Naira per liter, that is if you're able to see them in any police station. So the president, former president of Nigeria is just telling Nigerians that they have the powers in their hands. My dear brother, you agree with me that the Arab Spring Policies started and all other revolutions have started with people giving people wars of courage, wars of courage. Wars, revolutions, reformations, including political revolutions have only come through inspiring wars from inspiring leaders. What this wars from the former president should do to Nigerians is to inspire them to say, oh, we won't have the backing of past leaders who have been in government and they have seen that things have war-sowned from what it used to be in the past. Once we have this in the back of our mind, there is no doubt that we are not mango fruits that have season to ripe. This, even if we are aware, this should be Nigeria season to ripe because anybody who is not angry with what is happening in the current system is an enemy of the future of this country. Well, but how much confidence do you even have in the 2023 election? We've seen hoodlums burning INAG offices and most of the people that we think are going to be the difference in that 2023 maybe have not collected their PVCs because the people whose PVCs are being burned right now or stolen or vandalized or whatever name you're going to, what word you're going to use are the people who are new registrants and all that. Do you think the former voting population now has information enough to make the right choices? And do you think that the people who are carrying the revolution, so to speak, the youths and all that are themselves prepared to do whatever it takes to make sure that there's that change that we are expecting them to bring? Thank you very much. If you check the statistics of the registrants, the new registrants in the electoral system, you would have realized that there was a soldier of about 12.7 million votes. I don't know if I'm correct. That's for registration, collection of PVCs and other things. Of course. Now, for that figure to be willing now to be part of the political process, it means they have identified because in a social problem and social change, you were taught that when you identify a problem, that is when a solution comes back home. Now, having identified that, oh, the reason why things are this difficult, the reason why unemployment, the reason why inflation is at a staggering 21.7% is simply because we refuse to take part in the electoral process. If you remove the youth population in that number of registered voters, you would have had almost a significant number. So it shows that the people are ready. It shows that the message is permeating. And it shows that the people are now willing to take advantage of the reforms in the electoral system. What we require now, as it were, is not to be inspired by any other thing, but by speeches encouraging words of encouragement, speeches from people in the mode of a new signal passenger and other leaders. It is not time for people, particularly the youths whom you talked about, to begin to tell their people that, no, we have to bring the credentials of all these people vying for this office to the table, and begin to dissect their past antecedents, their current standards on issues, their standing on a government bloc. Are they giving us promises that we will come back to say yes? This man had promised this before as a governor for eight years in his state for instance, and he did them. Or are they just telling us the things that will suit our fancy? Are they just telling us things that, at the end of the day, will be saying, oh, I voted for him because he said, it is the turn of my tribe. It is the turn of my region to produce a prison. These are the issues that troubles the mind of the youth. Whereas for readiness, I can tell you that the average Niger youth is stopped about the current uplifts in the country, and I could presume that we are above 50% ready to take this country by ourselves. Well, I like your optimism. It depends on which part of the divide you are. Some people will think that we are not ready. Maybe the preparation is not good enough, even from the part of INEG, even in the face of using new technology like BVAS. We had option A4 at some point, and we thought that was the best kind of election that we ever had in 1993, but we still were talking about vote-buying after that. We were talking about some other things. And if you think it's foolproof that whatever INEG has done and whatever kind of education has gone to the villages is good enough for 2023, well, we pray it is so. But Abbas Anjo also said something, another thing, and he is always very passionate about farming, and he also advised that Nigeria should go into farming and take it seriously. He was talking to the thieves. He was talking to the Benway people, and these people are known to be very, very great farmers. But my question is, agriculture used to be the mainstay in Nigeria. Some countries like Malaysia were coming to Nigeria to study how to keep oil palms. And today Nigerians are going back, or Nigerians are going back to Malaysia to study, to understudy Malaysia. It's a shame. Where did we get it wrong? At what point did we just have that turnaround and become worse in things that we were doing great? Thank you very much, my dear brother. The issue rests quietly with leadership. If we can answer the leadership question correctly, then we can well say, yes, that we are on board in getting our agricultural sector back to what it used to be. If you cast your mind back, what I said earlier is what should trouble the minds of every Nigerian. Every Nigerian should cast his mind back to even the governments that were in 1999 to 2007. And the level of attention they paid to issues that matter to the people. To agriculture as a sector to education. I come from a state that is very, very poor, a poor state. And I know that I went through, for instance, through the secondary education, on a free education. I also know that while we are in Gome College at Fikbu then, it used to be mandatory for you to produce something. Which, at the end of the day, you may think is only ending with the teachers and the school management and all of that. But it's not true. If you have even a 1,000 hectare of land now in Epoi, ready for cassava cultivation and cassava planting and harvesting, it is not going to be something that a particular family will feed on. But the governments saw that the youth would become wiser if they continued to do that part of empowering them in these basic sectors, education, agriculture, and all of that. They started recruiting them to defend them on the social media while they used their other hand to take away their common words, to plunder their common words. That is what we got it from, if you ask me. Now farming began to become something that is dreaded. Even in secondary schools, again, it's like if you put your son in the best private school that is only teaching and learning, teaching and learning, and agriculture is taking away completely from the curriculum. I used to know when you can be bold to say, oh, these farms are to me. Inside a secondary school belongs to me. You're not sure it, you plant seasonal crops and harvest it, hand it over to school management. It was part of the school curriculum. This is not obtainable in this era. Just because the governors know that once they use a busily, dutyfully engaged, they will not be available for great. They will not be available for all the manner of things that they might want to deploy them to achieve their selfishness. So the statistic governors that has ruled this country at least in the last 16 years, and in the presence of democracy, are responsible for the decline of interest and the failure of agriculture. Let me be frank with you, my dear brother. If you go to the records and check the funds that has come through Padama for instance to state like a boy, you will agree with me that Padama has received World Bank and other assisted agencies, has given the government the enabling funds to be channeled into this agriculture. What do the government do with the funds? The government, not just a boy all over the country, because there is no, we don't even have a minister of agriculture who is up and doing and giving the statistics in following up on issues and all of that. What the governors do is to divert these funds to the private cronies who are politicians. They say they are buying fertilizer, they give them money. Those funds up to 80% or 90% of it does not touch on anything that has to do with agriculture. So how will you explain that a World Bank for instance through an assisted project like Padama has invested maybe close to five, 10 billion in the last eight years in a state like a boy. And we don't have any 2,000 hectares of land prepared for rice farming anywhere in the States. I'm just talking about 2,000 hectares of land. The government is not interested in taking the people back to farm because any day a governor sincerely, genuinely says, oh, I can take the same pump seed, pump seedling that Malaysians came to Nigeria to pick and it made the economy watch this today. This is where I want you, talks now that are carrying arms for me. This is where I want you to resume. Not sure this, not sure this palm tree, harvest the palm crops, don't even make returns, use it and take care of yourself. Agriculture will become a mistake again as it used to be in the past. Okay, so Cast Jamyong is what you are advocating from secondary school, from primary school even. They get to teach them and empower them. Well, if you have a final word for Nigerians regarding whether the election or anything else that might be your concern, this is the time. Just a few words before we wrap it up. Thank you very much. I'm very glad that all the parties now have, all the presidential candidates have now unveiled their manifestos. Before now, we used to talk here about renewed hope from Sinubu, the APC presidential candidate. Used to hear about a party community agenda. Now, we are hearing about the labor party candidate manifesto, which is released a few hours ago a few days ago. Now, Nigerians have the duty to interrogate those promises, vis-à-vis the antecedents, vis-à-vis the people back in the vis-à-vis the people. Nigerians should not take their words for what it is. These are all political promises that can be forgotten. If somebody said he's united Nigerians for a reason, what is antecedent towards the other segments or sections of the country? So what injustice is done to the other parts of the country? What have the candidates done regarding that? These are issues for interrogation. If somebody said, oh, that now he has empowered so many persons, and he believes that he will now ride on the back of those individuals to the most powerful seat on the earth of the nation, we should be asking, if he gets to that seat, what will be the role, what role will be played by these powerful individuals around him as a guest and vis-à-vis the interests of the common man in the streets? We should be asking, if you say you're giving us hope, you're giving us inspiration through your manifesto. Maybe these are the things you intend to do. You intend to take Nigeria from production, from consumption to production. What are your antecedents like? What have you done in the past? Have you produced something that is of what before? Can people look at, can Nigerians look at your credentials and say, yes, that we can see what you have produced? How much have you contributed to the local economy in your environment, in your states? The states you govern, what have your contributions? How sustainable are the legacy projects you left behind as a former governor? These candidates have all tested governorship positions for at least eight years except at the coup who was taken and became vice president almost the time he was about to be sworn as governor. But he has also tested when we have seen what he has done. You may say, yes, that he couldn't do much as a vice president, but he has had his artistic success since 2007. Since 2007, he has been saying, give me power, give me power. What has he done, even as a statesman? The way Obasin Goh is talking, is it the way he was talking eight years ago? The way Obasin Goh is talking, is it the way he was talking even before the APC came on board, he went there and he left? If Tinobu says, give me power, what has Tinobu done in the last eight years? If Tinobu brought Buhari protesters, and this is the case now, and this are the way they are, and they didn't speak up, can we trust the next four years to him and be sure that he will not repeat the Buhari disaster that would happen in the last eight years? If Epitobi said he has done this and that as a former governor, can we verify those records and bring it side by side with his future visitors? Who are those pioneering him? That is why on my final notes, as they used to know that it is the official that is at stake. If you don't do something now, if you don't act now, it will be too late and quite regrettable if you come to the future, in future to blame your children for the country you're handing over to them. That is my final word. Okay, thank you very much. They have all the texts, all the powers are within them in their BBC, gathered by the Electoral Act to cause a change in the policy. Thank you. I think they are worth it to do it. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Charles Ohtu, for your insight into these questions that were asked. Thank you for being a part of PLOS Politics today. Thank you so much, my dear brother. Well, this is how we draw the curtain on today's programme, PLOS Politics, and I'd like to thank you for being a wonderful audience watching us today. Let's do it again tomorrow. My name is Nyam Ghul at Gadji. Have a good evening.