 PEPT judgment gives National Assembly fresh task on Electoral Act for 2022 and letter approving Shia Boo's office relocation, suffices online. This is Plus Politics and I am Mary Anacond. The Electoral Act offered a lot of hopes and promises to Nigerians before the general elections. However, with the PEPT judgment Nigerians have just discovered that there are lots of loopholes in the 2022 Electoral Act and that there is a need for the National Assembly to revisit the law and make certain provisions much clearer. For instance the issue of swearing in the elected public officials into various offices while they still have electoral cases in the election petition tribunals. There is one area that many Nigerians felt was not properly addressed by the 2022 Electoral Law. Joining us to discuss this is Professor Richard Aduche Wokocha. He is a professor of law at the River State University. Thank you so much for joining us Professor Wokocha. Good evening. Great pleasure. Thank you very much and good evening. Thank you for joining us. Now for those of us who watched the presidential election tribunal give that verdict and were very succinct as to what they declared, like I said in my opening it has raised a lot of questions in the minds of Nigerians but let me start with the first thing. Swearing in public office holders while they still have court cases pending. Is this enough an issue for us to revisit how this Electoral Act was being put together in the first place and how we can plug loopholes? There are so many array of issues, the Abuja situation, the 25% of votes. Now people who are resident in Abuja are saying since the court has said this maybe we deserve to have our own governor and members of the National Assembly and have our own state House of Assembly but let's start with the swearing in public officials before the cases in the tribunal is ended. Well we've had a similar conversation before. My position has been that it's desirable, it's a good thing if you can exhaust all contestations before swearing in winners. It's always a good thing. However I do not think that it will make much difference. If what we are worried about is that when a candidate for a winner is sworn in, it will be easy for him to control the processes. Then he should worry about the processes that are controllable because processes are not supposed to be controllable. They are supposed to be strictly acting according to law or implemented according to law. So I think for me it's more like a reactionary thinking. It's not something that we solve a problem. What is the problem we are facing? I do not think the problem we are facing is the time a person is sworn in. I don't think that is a problem. The problem should be what makes us think that it is necessary to exhaust contestations before swearing in. That problem is what we should tackle and not the time. Take for example if your problem is that the court may be affected. The court that will be affected after swearing in will be affected after government. I mean after before swearing in. So you don't solve the problem by changing the point of swearing in. You solve the problem by ensuring that you make the courts incapable of being affected. So I think it's a reactionary thinking that does not solve the problem. Yes, Professor Wakata. Now there are a lot of people who are also of the opinion that if it took Mr. President, former President Mohamed Buhari a long time to sign into law the electoral act as amended. They are saying that the current national assembly should start early to amend the law to reflect the fact that all election cases must be trashed out by tribunals before swearing in of electoral offices. Is that doable? For the reforms in our electoral system it is a necessary thing to do. I will start early so it is always an advantage. Starting early means that you will definitely exhaust all you need to do before you will need to use that law to test that law in conducting another election. So yes, things that need to be worked on, reforms that need to be carried out in our electoral system to make it more perfect, they should begin now to look at them. But as I said, not for purposes of swearing in, while it is good, I have said it does not solve the problem we are trying to run from. But yes, starting early to deepen our democratic process by carrying out reforms, I will ensure it. It's also a desirable thing to do and I think it's a good goal. We spent so much time pressuring Mr. former President Buhari to even sign this law, this act into law. It took forever for this to happen. How easy will it be for us to get members of the National Assembly, the new National Assembly to revisit this particular electoral act? Also knowing that most of them came into power as a result of this electoral act with all the loopholes that we have seen seen through. Will it be easy a task or are we seeing something? Yeah, go ahead. The degree of participation of citizens in this last election will cause any lawmaker to understand the fact that people are serious about their reactions to how the process has been conducted. I think that that will play a role in making them take seriously protestations about the system and the need to do what is required to make the system more perfect or to improve on the system. I am not afraid that they will not want to act, but you don't always have to leave democratic issues to the electorate. They are beneficiaries of the system, so we must man the pressure. The civil society, the electorate should man the pressure on the need for those reforms to be done. If we do so and we sustain that pressure, the National Assembly will respond to it their way. When we had amendments for the general constitution in itself, the National Assembly did say, oh, they were going to go to different regions to get the people's input on some of those amendments. There are still many people who said, well, this didn't necessarily reflect what we wanted in the constitution. But in terms of this electoral act, what do you think should be done? Should the people also be consulted on the amendments that have to be injected into the electoral act? Issues bordering on the constitution and the constitutional provisions are serious issues that citizens ought to have in-tuit. More than even you do in making of other laws, other laws that are not of constitutional flavour, there is greater need for citizens to participate in issues affecting constitutional amendments. So yes, whatever amendments we are making, whatever reforms we are pursuing, the public hearings must be heard and people should have opportunity to make in-tuit, including if you have to take it to the various regions or constituent states or regions of the country, it will be necessary. I'm thinking here from the perspective of I'm looking at, I'm trying to cover all grounds here. Many would say that, look, the country is facing an economic downturn and if we say that we must allow citizen engagement before this act is reconsidered and amended, this will also cost a loss of money that the government and the country does not necessarily have. But then of course, in the order of priorities, where does this particular one fall, being that we also are struggling financially? The first point to note and I think that is important is the fact that whether they do it or not in order to give the constitutional amendment or reforms a people's level, whether they do it or not, the votes for the year will be spent. There will be vacations and monies will be released to them to make vacations comfortable for them. So let's not worry about money that is properly utilized in order to inject the feeling of the people or the input of the people in lawmaking. That shouldn't bother us. We should worry about the wasteages. So this will not for me be a wastage and there is nothing more important for the National Assembly to do with respect to the relationship with the constituent people. There is nothing more important than getting their feel into whatever reforms we are carrying and whatever policies we are enacting and the laws we are making. I think it's important enough to spend whatever money that has to be spent on it. All right. Let me go back to some of the things that have led to people reacting and asking for an amendment to the electoral act of 2022. Now it is also believed from the verdict that was given at that PPT that the National Assembly needs to revisit the issue of 25% of votes cast in the federal capital territory at Buja. Some people believe that the language is clay enough for even the lay person to understand that it's important or the input of that particular line. They're saying that it's increasingly becoming difficult to believe what the PPT verdict was on Abuja which has also raised the argument of it's maybe time to call Abuja a state and give it a governor. What are your thoughts? I think we are mixing too many unrelated things and strong issues like presidential election are issues that are serious enough for us to commit serious time to and to do it in a serious manner. You will recall we had this discussion while the tribunal was still sitting and my view was simply that there is no democracy in the world where there is a place that must be won. That very idea is anti-democratic. Democratic elections are level as they are egalitarian activities where one man has one vote. The vote of Mr. President is now higher than the vote of the poorest man in the most remote village of Nigeria. For purposes of declaring winner there must be somebody who pose the highest number of votes and if not what makes that person higher than the others is one single vote cast by the poorest man in Nigeria is the winner. That argument does not reflect anything that should receive any attention. I do not know as I said last time I do not know where that impression is coming from. The constitutional provision is clear and it defines the areas from which a person who has the highest score must win not less than one third of the votes in two-thirds of the territory of Nigeria. 36 states and Abuja is conductive meaning that you must win two-thirds of 36 states of Nigeria and the federal capital because the federal capital is a voting area it's not in the states. If you do not construct that way 36 states and Abuja it means that all votes cast in Abuja avoid votes. The constitution did not neither does it pretend to give the impression that it means that votes cast in Abuja are special. What do you call that kind of special? There is no democracy in the world. There is no country in the world where there is a weighted vote anywhere or a special area that must be won. So where is that strange thinking coming from? What is that clarity that even the common man understands that they cannot understand from what I am saying? If you are confused look at the previous constitution. 1979 constitution simply said you win two-thirds of the states. At that time the federal capital territory was labeled and it was a state and this provision was simply introduced to ensure that votes cast in Abuja are not wasted votes that they are not voided or uncanted votes. Why are we making something else out of it? It's election and democracy, rocket science. There is something down all over the world. There is no justification for any impression that there is an area that must be won let alone an area like Abuja that is not even the states. It's a simple provision that simply seeks to gather the votes and count in the votes of Abuja so that they are not wasted. That is not an issue to discuss at all and there is nothing to amend there. Let's talk about those who are also pushing for the revisiting of the electoral act on the issue of electronic transfer of election results. Many have said that this has to be made very clear. Many have also said that INEC knew that there was no law necessarily pressuring them to upload these results or transfer these results electronically in the electoral act and that it was just a gentleman's agreement and that's why the court also ruled the way that they ruled. Should this be also something that needs to be enshrined in the electoral act of 2022 if we do get to amend it? Yeah, once we are sure that we are certain about the technology, you want to do that, you can do that. Otherwise, nothing prevents the electoral system from ensuring that it is transferred electronically. Now if you look at the current law, what the law stresses is that after counting the votes, the votes must be transferred. The law did not stress the manner in which the transfer should be done, whether it should be manual or electronic. It left that in the hands of the umpire that is organizing the election. The one possible risk about putting that method in the law is that if for any reason we are unable to transfer it in that particular manner, any other thing you do will become illegitimate. Even if we feel confident that something went wrong with how the one for this election was conducted, it also means that if there is any form of glitch caused by any genuine causes or issues, the entire election conducted for that day will be voided. And we'll have to be repeated so long as you are not able to transmit it in that particular way. But for our Nigerian problem, what one can call Nigerian problem, which is problems of implementation and abuse of processes, the law would have been alright the way it is to ensure that using the regulator, we can advance the use of technology as we move. However, the problem it poses is that where what happened, the way it happened now happens, the kind of result you have will be what will happen. And when we discussed the last time why Tribunal was dissenting, I did say that this will be what will likely happen. And the simple reason is that because we follow the law, what is contained in the law, INEC regulations are important for ensuring that INEC is able to organize the election the way the law desires it to be organized. But they are inferior to the law itself. And so if something that has met the requirement of the law fails to meet the requirement of INEC regulation, I did say that the course will uphold it because it has met the requirement of the law. That was not the beginning, but I did cite the case of Yeson-Wike versus Peterside and others. And the same thing has been. Mr. Wakata, are you still there? Can you hear me? Wherever the issue of the law has been complied with, but the regulation and interior rule has not been complied with, the law will uphold that which has been complied with. Professor Wakata, I think that we lost your audio again. So I, oh sorry. Yes, I was saying wherever there is compliance with the law and non-compliance with an inferior regulation, whether it is met by INEC or any other interior body. So long as the law has been complied with, it will be upheld. So perhaps what we can do is grow proactive. And those who are participating in it take steps to ensure that there are no loopholes to exploit in it the way it is. But if you want to amend it and do that, it's not impossible. Our funds are working. Our ATMs are working. So we can ensure that an election day, that electronic transmission method works. If we want to put that into the law, it will also be a good thing. It will reduce the space for human interaction and human intervention and the pulling of election results. So yes, it will be a desirable thing if we want to put it in the law in a subsequent amendment. Finally, in just one minute, what are the reforms now that we've all sat through the electoral process of 2023 with all of our high expectations? What are the reforms? Do you think that INEC and the people need to consider if we do have to take a look again at the electoral act? My sister, we do transfer with our phones. We use our ATM machines and the function. It is possible for us to vote electronically. Let us pursue that reform to that logical conclusion where voting can be a real time thing. Okay. All right. Well, I apologize for the hiccup there with the internet. So that the electoral process as we vote, we get the result at the collation center. It is possible. It's going on in the other parts of the world. It shouldn't be impossible for us to do. So I think we should pursue the reform, electoral reforms, to that logical conclusion that actual electronic voting can be done in Nigeria. Professor Richard Adujewa Kocha is a professor of law at the River States University. We want to say thank you very much for being part of this conversation. Always a pleasure. It's a citizen's duty. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Well, we'll take a break. When we return, we'll look at the feud between the deputy governor and the governor in a dough state. Stay with us.