 Welcome back to the run up. Well, the presidential election tribunal has restrained the commission, that's the INEC, from tampering with all sensitive materials, including the beavers used in the conduct of the presidential election. Following the request by the candidates of the PDPE and the Labor Party, Atiku Abu Bakar and Peter will be respectively, who rejected the outcome of the presidential election. The Court of Appeal in Abuja on Wednesday granted INEC permission to reconfigure the bimodal voter accreditation system machines used for the 25th February presidential and national assembly elections across the country. The panel, however, ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission to upload the data on the beavers' machines to the backend server and make certified true copies of the data to the respondents. The position candidates, who came second and third, respectively rejected the emergence of the APC candidate, Tbola Tinubu, as winner of the election and called for the conduct of another round of elections or be declared the winner. Well, joining us to discuss this is Uthman Issa Tochiku. He's a legal practitioner. Thank you, Uthman, for joining us. Thank you very much for having me, Mori. All right, so Uthman, first of all, how surprised were you when you heard about the postponement of the governorship election? Thank you very much for having me. I don't think I was actually surprised that the Saturday election was going to be postponed, even though it is not proper to preempt the outcome of the proceedings of court in the circumstance. This is because under section 24 of the Electoral Act, specifically in section 24, so two of the Electoral Act, it has provided that INED have the right under some certain emergencies or exigencies, as the case may be, to postpone any election, as the case may be in the country. And then fix another date to conduct such election. So in that vein, I wasn't actually surprised that the postponement was going to come, looking at the facts of what was facing INED at the time. We could recall that they were in court for them to be granted leave to reconfigure the beavers ahead of the election. And that order quite actually came late. So it is enough for them to rely in the circumstance to say that they want to postpone the election. So long as the law has given them that latitude to so do, I wasn't actually surprised that it was going to come. Yeah, you've alluded to the fact that that request from INED came late. Do you read anything to that coming late? That request from INED coming at the time, it did just a few days to the governorship election. How suspicious does that appear to you? I don't think it actually appears suspicious in any way. Let us note it to public sentiment and public opinion when we raise some of these issues. These are issues of facts and data. And you know that in data management, there's what is called backup, right, and restore. So under backup and restore in data management, it is understandable that even if INED had gone to reconfigure the beavers, it has no effects whatsoever to the previous election that had been heard that is about to be contested in court. It's not going to temper with any evidence as far as that particular issue that has to deal with backup and restore is concerned. And the court had also instructed that they must have to do that backup in order to unveil some of those parties who are agreeing with the outcome of the initial election to be able to have access to some of the document that will aid their plea in court. So with that being in mind, I do not think there's any suspicion whatsoever. It just, the public outcry, right, for INED making a move to reconfigure the beavers. They thought that it's going to affect the evidence that was used to conduct the presidential election. But if you look at it from the professional perspective, i.e., I'm talking about now keeping data and all of that, it doesn't have any effect whatsoever. It doesn't have any effect. All right, when the opposition parties, the candidates request to inspect these machines, what more do you think they're looking for besides the results that are there? Because clearly, it does seem that it's not just the results that you want to see. What else do you think they could be looking for? We are still on the run-up, and our guest is Uthman Isato Chukwu Legal Practitioner, joining us to take a look at the postponement of the governorship election and all that's happening around that, and the just concluded presidential election, plus the forthcoming governorship election that couldn't hold. Uthman, sorry, we couldn't continue our conversation smoothly as we had hoped to would, but let's continue from where we stopped. I was asking, if it were just as simple as them having access to the results, would they have gone to court to seek for inspection, authority to inspect these machines, or is there something more that they're looking for aside from the uploaded results? Yes, the law provides that in order to have access to a public document kept in a public institution, right, you need a legal order from courts to be able to assess such a document, especially when it has to deal with a document that will support your case. And you know, before what emanated that particular intention to assess some of those documents was as a result of the election that was conducted on Saturday, that presidential election, and then INEQ is going to be joined as a party to come and explain and give their own facts as with regards to the outcome of the election. And in that vein, you don't expect that INEQ would just willingly give out access to some of those documents, even though it is a public document. So the idea thing to do was for the applicants, i.e. some of those parties who were agreed with the outcome of the election to go to court to seek for an order of court to give them to grant them that leave or permission to say, right, to allow INEQ to give them access to some of those documents. So it is the right thing to have done and that's what actually happened. Well, with all the controversies thrown up by that election and the litigations and all that, would it be correct to say that INEQ probably was hasty in declaring a winner? I don't think that is correct because if you had gone through that electoral process, you would understand that it took about three to four days there about to declare this election. The election was held on Saturday and I think it took Sunday, Monday, Tuesday before results was announced. I didn't think INEQ was in a case but I wouldn't also say that the process was not mad with lots of irregularities and that is what animated some of these grievances that has prepared some of these candidates to go to court to conduct the outcome of the elections. INEQ worked within their timeline and also within their timetable, but of course, the election is not satisfactory to the citizens of this country and myself too, I have my own personal reservations with the process that characterize the election and in all of that, all we have to do is to submit all our grievances to court since the mother is now going to be distilled in court we should all wait and see how the court is going to determine the issue and then we'll all learn from the outcome. Okay, well, the forthcoming election that's the governorship has just been postponed. What's the import of this postponement on the election, would you say? Well, there is no import, it just for the... In fact, it has given an opportunity for some of the candidates to go home and reorganize themselves and then do one or two more campaigns before upper week Saturday, which is on the 18th of March, 2023. So I think it's to the advantage of some of those candidates because some persons are not here lately. Like yesterday, I was in court for a pre-lateral matter. My client was supposed to be one of the contestant on Saturday. His name was omitted and we got an order of court and serve on INED to include his name to contest the election on Saturday. When this court order had not... When this postponement date had not been issued by INED, so you can imagine with him that we're just left with two days of 48 hours to conduct his campaign. We would be left with another more seven to eight days to campaign before the 18th. So you can see with the advent of this postponement is to his advantage. So I think it's more of advantage to the contestant than it is of disadvantage to them. All right, we've had repeated series of hiccups marrying electoral processes in this country. And here we are today with all of these controversies. Trillium has just concluded presidential election. I wonder, why do we keep getting it wrong with our electoral processes? I think I would agree with you in fact, right? That we are getting it... We're not getting it to correct, you know, electoral process, but not always getting it wrong. I think that will not speak well for our country. We are a nascent democracy and as such, we are still growing. We should not also be unmindful of the fact that Nigeria is working in progress and... Okay, he was just going to say that Nigeria is still a work in progress. Yes, yes. All right, good. And that being said, that being said, we will continue to develop our electoral process. And as you can see, the beavers were just tested for the first time in our electoral history. And we could see for sure, even though the elections to some, you know, like yesterday was mad with irregularities, we cannot also shy away from the development that the beavers have brought in our electoral process. There are some states that since inception of that state have been ruled by one political party. And then we could see the emergence of other political party taking over and disrupting the status quo in some of those states. These are issues that we cannot also shy away with when we criticize the backside of the election. National test run of these machines, do you think? Because when we had the Oshui election and then there were issues that were thrown up from that, some of us were a bit cautious with our excitement about the beavers. And we thought, but then some lawyers explained to us that the beavers saved the day in that election, that the beavers actually did show that it could be relied upon to help the process. However, with the just concluded election, we've discovered that it just, well, didn't go as we had hoped it would go. Are you of the opinion, as some have postulated, that there should have been a national test run of these machines before the elections? Yeah, I share that opinion, actually, that there should have been a national test run because at least if you're using anything for the first time, it deserves to be test run, especially when it has to serve about 200 million ideas. So, and this is our national election for that matter. And I think that's why INEC wants to learn from his mistake by saying it should be allowed to reconfigure this in order not to repeat what had happened during the presidential election. Although that's not an excuse to, for INEC are not willing to agree for them, but it is important for us to understand that we are using this thing for the first time in our election and we should not share a way that we will experience some of these irregularities, but at least to a very minimal extent, but not to this porous extent that had landed us into this trouble. But another thing is that the law had also provided support for some of these things, right? Even if you get this all correct, there will still be that some persons who will show grievances with the outcome. And then that's why the court is there for them to go and table their issue before the court and let the court determine how the process went. So at this point, I would say that, yes, it would have been subjected to national test run, but in the absence of that and the outcome had happened, then the only refuge is for the agreed candidates to seek the redress before the court. Yeah. Well, you know, one could easily say, look, the elections have taken place. Let's just move on. But then it becomes imperative too, because if we're gonna forestall a repeat of an ugly history, we must fix it so that by next four years, when we go back to the polls, we will not be here again discussing some of these glitches that have continued to plague the electoral process in the country. However, this, another thing that could go wrong from this postponement of the governorship election is the fact that it could create more voter apathy. Do you share that thought? Yeah, it's one of those consequences actually that the postponement had caused the voter apathy aspect of it. And it will be very sad and it will not be good for our electoral system and our elections too. You see, when you talk about some people saying that if you had to use a election, you should just relax and let it go. I don't think it's the idea thing to do in a democracy. I mean, we operate a constitutional democracy. In a constitutional democracy, it allows every individual to express themselves in terms of their rights that have been guaranteed under the constitution. And some of those rights can only be expressed by approaching the courts to lay your grievances. If you are not happy with the outcome of the process, I don't think it would be fair for anybody to tell you to go home and relax. If you feel you have some overwhelming evidence that could convince the court to tilt to your argument, why not? The constitution has given you that right to go to court and demand for your rights based on the past presented before it. So I do not subscribe to the idea of election has come and gone, those who have lost to them, go home and relax. If they feel they have something substantial, I mean, our laws encourage us that they should go to court and then present whatever they feel they have before the court and let the court hear them. Well, thank you so much, Uthman Isartuchku, for your time and insight on this very crucial matter. Have a great day. Thank you for having me. Well, we'll take a short break, we'll be back. Stay with us.