 Good morning to you and thanks for joining us on the run-up today. My name is Nyamgul Aghaji and my name is Uche Chuku Onoda. We also have on standby Bayo Loa Kei, welcome to the program Bayo. Good morning viewers and it's nice to be part of the presentation. Okay, today we will be on the road to 2023 as it were. General election is coming up in 2023 and everybody is talking about the election. We keep getting closer and closer to that day and the question on the minds of Nigerians, what should be expected? How ready are we really? Will this one be different from the past elections? These and more questions will be answered by a human right activist I would like to call him and a public commentator, a lawyer also by profession, public affairs analyst, so many things rolled into one. Mr. Laborious Osama will be joining us to say that. And also the showdown between ASU and the federal government continues. The question is why does it seem like the labor unions are quiet? At some time in April they came out to talk to the federal government about being silent as a strike progressed. But after then nothing has been heard from them. We will be having this conversation with Comrade Fidelis Eder. He is a lawyer, a farmer and a former labor leader. I like the sound of farmer. Whenever I say farmer, I know that when we're talking farming, we're talking food security as well, so that we don't have to fear. But we will also still have a third guest that will be talking to us on the same road to 2023, a different perspective from what Laborious Osama will be talking to us about. Without even having to take a break because Osama is waiting already, we'd like to go to him. Hello and welcome to the program Mr. Osama. Yeah, good morning. Okay, the elections are approaching. It's a matter of weeks now. We shouldn't even be counting months. First of all, are we ready as a people? If we are ready for election, I would tell you yes, Nigerians are ready for election. The Nigerians that have consistently voted are ready for election. The politicians also that knows what election is are ready for election. I don't know about other people, but I can tell you that Nigerians have never been this ready. There have been a lot of debates back and forth on the roads to the election. There have been months slinging consistent of our campaign, consistent with our campaign. Before the campaign, there were a lot of issues on whether the campaign should be issue-based. But we also know that that's far from what we see now. What you hear are months slinging and less of how Nigeria will move forward. Please, I also need you to quickly correct my name. My name is not Laburus. My name is Liburus, L-I-B-O-R-O-U-S-P. Whether Nigerians are ready, Nigerians are ready. But whether election would take us away from the current position we are in is a different category altogether. But if we are ready, Nigerians are ready, a lot of people have been saying your PVC, your PVC. But I tell people the stress and the huddles you have to cross to register for your permanent botask card is different from the one you will have to cross to collect the permanent botask card. So there are three people who are waiting to collect their permanent botask card. So to that extent, I don't know how prepared I-NEC is in respect of distribution. But come for election, Nigerians are ready to vote. And if you ask them to come out and vote on Saturday, they want to get it done and overworked. All right. A couple of elections have happened very recently. I'm talking about the ocean states elections and of course the most recent, which is the Anambra state elections. What lessons do you think we can take away from these most recent elections, you know, judging from 2023? There are no lessons, basically really. Apart from the difference from the elections we have had so far, for the politicians, they keep, you know, taking one or two things away. I-NEC consistently we promise that elections, you know, are going to be different. We saw that, yes, with the beavers, consistent with modern technology, you know, some persons now can monitor, you know, elections from the polling units as they are being uploaded. But the first thing, like I always tell people, the first sacrament to election being different is, you know, having a different perspective toward the election. We're talking about diaspora voting, we're talking about online voting. If there's no diaspora voting, there's no online voting and during election, it's not going to be different. So you're still going to have the same, you know, people troop out to the polling unit to vote on the day of election and at the end of the day results are counted and then uploaded, you know, in iNEC website and people are going to monitor how aware is the voter, how educated are we educated them, you know, is there still going to be vote buying, vote, show me the vote and then come and collect money, yes, there will still be. Do you still have a lot of, you know, illiterate voters, who, you know, the Baba Supe kind of voters, yes, they are still there. Do you still have people who mainly have voted, they really don't understand why they are voting. Yes, they are still there. These are largely what determines the outcome of the Nigerian election. So do we have, you know, recently we saw the midterm election in America and two weeks before the poll, people were already, you know, early voters were already trooping to vote. Do we have that in Nigeria that is going to create a departure from what we know? No, the answer is no. We are still talking about voter's card collection. That's what will, you know, the instrument you need to activate to make you eligible. How many people have been able to collect? The answer is still no. iNEC is still, you know, not for coming with that. And then secondly, like I said, can we vote online, can the aspirant vote just like it happened in Kenya in Malawi? No, the answer is no. So with all of this, so what it means is that, apart from B-Vas, card readers were introduced in 2015, in 2019 years, B-Vas was introduced, we just also consistently modernized it. I have been assured in a kitty, in Anambra, consistent of the political parties, we saw the outcome. So if you put all of this in the mix, there's basically nothing that would change in the election. You're still going to have the dominant parties carry the day with some of the fringe parties, you know, lagging behind. That's basically, you know, there's no going to be any upsets. Well, but you talked about Oshoon, Akiti and Anambra. You know, Oshoon, a lot of people feel the election where, the previous election where the now elected governor of Oshoon State contested, he could have won. He thinks that are now available where available then. A lot of people felt that he even won that election, but it was upturned because there were no evidences anywhere else that could have supported him to be the winner of that election. So I'm wondering why you still said that there is no much difference in the conduction of this election that led to the winning of Adelike, for instance, if not in any other state. Let me tell you, in that the previous election, the 2018 election in Oshoon, which you remember, Omishore was then in PDP. It was almost as if Adelike was going to carry the day and elections were postponed. And then the likes of Omishore because elections were postponed in some part of Efe. The likes of Omishore, the APC leaders were to woo Omishore to support the APC. And that was when Omishore decamped to APC. These are party leaders that have, you know, massive followers in their domain. The defection of Omishore played a major role in the 2018 election in Oshoon, except you are not a keen follower of elections at that level. Also, if you look at the 2022 election in Oshoon, before the election, Arabeshala, who was a governor in that state, fell out with Tinugu and Oyetola, the outgoing governor. Arabeshala is a factor in Oshoon, whether he's still a governor or not. And so he still has his followers who were not happy the way he was treated by the powers that be in the Southwest, especially the way Tinugu and Oyetola treated him. Arabeshala on the day of election was said to be in America. Arabeshala's supporter, who ordinarily would have supported the APC, also stayed aloof. So if you look at the margin between the APC and the PDP, it was about 23,000 votes or so. That margin, if Arabeshala had supported the APC, APC probably would have closed that gap. Mind you, they are delicate family in Oshoon and not a family you toil with when it comes to election. In Ede, they have consistently controlled that domain. Isiaka, the Ede brother, was a governor in that state. He has consistently built political structure. That was why the moment he died, not that there were no people in the party when the man died, but the party leaders had to give the ticket in PDP because they wanted a territorial seat. They know that the only family that could give them that victory was a delicate family. They gave it to the dancer, who is today the governor-elect. So they already understand the political influence that that family controls. So coming against a sitting governor, it was easier and it would have been better for the APC to put their house in order. The APC would have been better, that was why you saw what happened in Oshoon. So let me not be deceived that it was because Einig introduced Bevers. It is the same voters. They are the same voters. If a new party had created an upset, let us assume. Look at, let me take your mind quickly to a kitty. A kitty also was the name of the former governor, Oni. Shegu Oni was in PDP, but he left PDP because he was not given the ticket of PDP and he went into SDP. If Shegu Oni, even though he put the total number of votes of the PDP and the SDP together, the APC still defeated them, but if Shegu Oni had remained in PDP and he had been given the ticket because the candidate of the PDP was unknown. So if he had remained in the PDP and had been given the ticket in the PDP, they probably would have worked twice and had. And some persons that went to the APC probably would have also had SDP for Shegu Oni being a former APC member and the former governor in the state. So these are the factors that are still playing out in our election. You don't have a situation where persons who are resident outside the domain of Nigeria will participate in the election through electronic voting. You don't have persons who will not be able to come out on the day of election for fear of insecurity going out to conduct their vote, you know, before the day of poll. That's why you call early votes. So all of these things are still not there. You still have a situation in Nigeria, building up to 2023, where people, where the politicians, we still pander to a region. You have a massive voting population in the nuts, where they would still go, you know, talk to the Alimajirees, talk to the Talakawa, the plebeians, or talk to the bourgeois to also talk to their people. You still have a situation where you will pander to the market room and more than people who are in Daspora because they have no vote. You also still have a situation where people will tell you, you are an online warrior because you have no PBC. So you're coming here. Back to us. Yes, I will take off. Thank you very much. This is a very succinct analysis that you have given with facts and verifiable projections. I was just thinking, you know, from the standpoint of those who might want to revisit the, or show the first elections, so to speak, which Governor-elect Adelike ran against Oyetola. There are those who would say that despite the measured factor, which you rightly also alluded to, and the other projections that were made, it still took the PBC two elections and a court case to produce the governor. What would be your response to those who advance this argument? Two elections and a court case in a case? Yes, two elections and a court case for Oyetola to be governor. That's despite the measuring factor. So what would be your response to those who advance this line of argument? Yeah, because mind you, in 2015, there were a lot of hopes from the people on the APC and its candidates. They were, in fact, the slogan was anything but Jonathan, aware with his PhD, people said, 2011, people were happy. Yes, we have somebody who didn't, who had no shoes, who had no shoes, who could feel our pain. But Jonathan had a lot of good weight. He frittered it away. By 2015, people want anything but Jonathan. But the same people, the same APC that promised El Dorado in 2015 to hit the ground running, started running away from the ground. So all of those factors also affected the outcome of the election in Oshoom State because also quickly before I go there, the autogame movement in Kuala today, then people wanted anything but the Saraki dynasty. But the same people that sponsored the autogame movement today are complaining that they had a lot of hopes on the current governor, but he has frittered it away. Most of those had good will. That was the same thing that played out in Oshoom, in Oshoom State just before Uyetola came in. That people thought that Aribashala also had what always salaries consistently. Aribashala's tenure in Oshoom State is what the bookmakers, bookkeepers, would not want to remember in a long time. If you remember, Aribashala consistently was in the news for the wrong reasons. Because mind you, Aribashala won election through the tribunal and people breached a sigh of relief that away from PDP and their shenanigans. But Aribashala was also not different. So then came the Adelike factor. So people felt, yes, Adelike already had a structure. His brother's structure was there, the family had money. And so people wanted to try something different. And mind you, they also didn't like the way Tinnobu explained the politics in Lagos, that you bring people from Lagos imposed on these locars. So then Uyetola was related to Tinnobu. Tinnobu was already detecting what was happening in Lagos. He could not be detecting what was said to be happening in Oshoom. So if you also take quickly what Aribashala said during the quarrel, he said Tinnobu promised him, support to Uyetola. You play the politics here, why he will concentrate on governor. So for that, there seems to be a consensus added them. But because also Tinnobu, Aribashala was not too popular. And so they had to woo the Omishore factor, faction. Omishore also, yes, had a cloud, but the election was almost won by the Adelike. But the IPC needed a little manipulation. Security operatives that they complained against in 2011 became handy. So these are factors that consistently play out in the Nigerian election. So I can see them playing out in the 2023 general election. Just a very quick one. Yes, sorry, I will go because we spent a lot of time on Oshoom, but it's very illustrative and instructive of the dynamics of the Nigerian political environment. I was just going to say now, we're going to so articulately advance all these factors that impacted Oshoom. What are the factors you see coming to play in 2023? What are those factors? Fantastic. You see, when I took time to explain all of these factors, the importance of people, the importance of political structures in Nigerian election, I was given an analysis recently somewhere and I said, look, a local government chairman, for example, why do you think governors conduct local government election just a few months to the expiration of the tenure? Because they know a local government's chairman has largesse to distribute. Unlike that man who is not in the office who will give you promised remotes. So for the local government, the sitting governor, for example, he has something to negotiate with, which is why we, K, is a big factor against the article today. If they can do anything to bring him back on the phone, they will do that because he has largesse to distribute. He has the funds. The state governors in Nigeria have funds. You look at the spread as unpopular as the government of Buhari seems to be. The APC seems to have a little upper edge because they have more governors and their governors are not as dissident as the PDP governors that you have today led by Wike, who is not happy with the outcome of all this playing out in his own party. If you also see the APC governors already trying to woo him, the five of them have visited him consistently, you know, everybody's going to Wike. The PDP, you know, is banking on the fact that the article is a nutterna and being a nutterna that the nutter naturally build a panda to us, you know, gravitate towards the nuts. But the governors also know the implication of a nutterna handing over to a nutterna. If a nutterna handed over to a nutterna, the crisis in the south, especially considering the tribalism and the nepotism of the Buharis administration, which was why the nutterna governors also, you know, kicked against Ahmed Lauer, the production of Ahmed Lauer as a candidate. So to that extent, I think the nutterna APC governors are going to work together to, for once, also find a way to strike a balance. It's a give and take thing. So let's, we have one of us, a former governor, a former senator, as a running mate, and consistently, he's been saying to be given a permanence in the, in this team. So that will give them an edge in that light. Particle, consistently, his major vote from the south had been in the southeast. And that southeast now had branched off to OB. So that is taking a chunk of Particle's vote away. To know, what do you call it, I'm calling Wiki, despite his disagreement with the party in 2019, supported the party massively with funds and logistics. Today, Wiki is leading five governors away from the PDP just the same way articulate five governors, initially seven, and then later became five. Just the same way articulate five governors away from the PDP in 2015. So today, Wiki is leading five governors away and they might be six if Bala Mohamed joins them. So then you have the Kwakwansu factor. The Kwakwansu also left PDP right there in Kano commands, you know, some form of also the Kwakwansu movement. So all of these are going to play out in the PDP affair. But for the Labor Party, the Labor Party, you have a lot of elites and then, you know, fantastic messages, you know, and more of logistics. Recently, I saw them looking at a voter's register and urging INEC to remove underage voter. That is late in the day. INEC, we know that INEC can do that now. So we have consistently pointed out, pointed out underage voter in those register, even Petition's name in some cases. And I have said in our voter's register it's about but nobody cares to listen. And the fact that they do not have sitting governors in Labor Party, they do not even have a sitting local councilor. That is going to work massively against them. Because if you go to Oshoom, for example, you can say Adeleke will give me 500,000 votes. The PDP can say Adeleke will deliver 500,000 votes for us. Labor cannot point to somebody who will give them equal number of votes in any of the states. It's all going to be, you know, these young people, a lot of them who are struggling to collect their PVC. So that is why I'm telling you that the major political parties will still be the ones that will determine, you know, the outcome of the general election with the French parties lagging behind them. These are all the factors from my prison. It's been a marathon one, the voters, as always. And we'd like to thank you so much for giving perspective to this topic. The days leading to 2023 are still a bit far if we're talking about discussing the things that will lead up to that and give us what we would, at least a semblance of what we want 2023 and beyond to be. And so we are going to still require your services as time goes on. Thank you for being... No problem, ma'am. At your service, Nationwide. Thank you. Okay. That was the Boryos Osama, a legal practitioner, human rights activist, a public affairs commentator, and so many things. And he said, at your service, Nationwide. I remember an ad that used to do that about let me not mention that. It was fun having him. Bio, it was a really critical question that you asked about his projections, things that will lead to the outcome that we are going to have in 2023. That was really a nice one there. But he has painted a picture that seems so clear from his own words and all that. And I don't know what you think about his entire analysis. Yes, his analysis were quite instructive and quite also logical. The position that I had, Brian, I know those who argue that if the ABC was that strong, strong, why did he take two elections despite the miseries support for them and a court case to deliver the governorship? Likewise, there are also those, although we didn't have the opportunity to engage him more. But one of the perspectives that will have been good to hear from him would be the perspective of those who argue that if Labour parties will be true, they don't have a counsellor, they don't have governors, but that if OB, for example, gets the bulk of the votes of the South East as his primary constituency, is it not possible for OB to get one quarter of the votes in most of the states of the South, especially, you know, and then given the disenchantment of the middle belt with attacks by bandits and all of this insecurity that the middle belt in particular has suffered, was there no possibility that the middle belt will go to OB rather than go to former vice president Atiku, okay, or Ashiraju and his group. So there's this position and it is a very strong position of those who are, you know, advancing it to say that that actually will make OB's candidature a very strong candidature in this election, not to be dismissed, as people say he doesn't have any structure. I think early this morning where some people were trying to argue or look at a projection for 2023 and they said, apart from the OB that you're calling, the other candidates that are frontline line candidates may be banking on intimidation and so many other factors that are not even illegal, let me call it illegal, because they may be desperate so that they know the places they may not have votes and they will go there to disrupt the election. Only that can be the one that will save them. If this is allowed to play out, then maybe what they're talking about structures will really affect the OB candidature that you're talking about because structure when you talk is the people, OB has the people, but the structures in the Nigerian context are those people who can lay their lives to make sure that a vote that doesn't come to their principle gets missing or is never cast. So we have to factor that into the equation as well when we're talking about 2023. So maybe more needs to be done in areas of security and other factors that will enable us have a free and fair election in 2023. And talking about the place of security, I was going to say that when you talked about the structure from the Nigerian factor, how that people are ready to lay their lives, which is very true. If you lay your ears down in the streets, you would hear the conversations already going on about the plans of boys and that's the most I can say about that. But then you hear also people, especially the young persons who are obedient, if I'm to use that word, say things like, okay, get your PVCs, get ready, because that is the only way you can participate and make a change or make a difference. But then by the time you look at it critically, a lot of these people, whether obedient or not, are scared for their lives because it's like a straight-up division. Is it that you are ready to lay your life or you're not? So you have a lot of people who are also going to be affected by the security situation. They're already projecting, it's not me people are going to do whatever on that day, saying that from the street language. People are scared. Is that really going to be a difference in the security situation? That is actually what I'm driving at because it's not news. I mean, you hear gunshots, you hear people tell their own stories about situations they had to face because they just went to vote. Do you understand? Well, a lot more, like I said, will have to be done to assure the people. It may not be a picture of gloom and doom, all that. It may not be the way people are seeing it that it might be. But everybody needs to be reassured in some way that the security will be tight for those days that we're going to have election in 2023 because everybody's ready to vote, but not everybody is ready to risk their lives because of voting. And there's always been this cut that has been played by politicians that, okay, just make them not come because if there's voter apathy, there's a likelihood that the only people that will go out will be the ones that are core supporters of whoever has that catchment area as it were. So something has to be done to assure the people now that the semblance of confidence in INAIC, there should also be that kind of confidence in the security apparatus. Okay, I mean, you said it quite succinctly and Buche as well has heightened the fears that people have. I think Buche also put it quite clearly that people are quite worried. But let's not forget a few things because again, those who would want their own position favored and knowing that it was a level playing field, it might not work for them will try to discourage people. So let's get one or two things clear, which are from my observation. Number one, the president and commander in chief of the armed forces, President Buhari, I believe knows that one of the things that can assure his legacy is to conduct a free and fair direction. He has seen that from a president, Jonathan, and also even with president of Basson Joe as a military head of state who handed over power on October 1, 1979, at a time when it was unprecedented for a military leader in Africa to return power to Syria. And we knew what that made of Basson Joe. He became an international ego immediately to the extent that Basson Joe was one of those together with former prime minister of Australia, Malcolm Fraser, the former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Shridat Rampal, who formed the eminent persons group that ended apartheid in South Africa. And that's how the statue of a Basson Joe rose. So Jonathan also accepted the results, did not tamper with the election, and we have seen how President Jonathan has become a leading African Union ambassador for resolving conflicts in Africa. So President Buhari knows that despite the challenges his administration has had, okay, if he delivers on a successful election his legacy could be fairly reasonably assured. Secondly, the body language that we are seeing, some have said that they changed in the design of the Naira, could also be an attempt to ensure a level playfield in the political space. Thirdly, I think people should not buy the argument that their votes may not count. I cannot be naming specific places, but if you do a proper analysis of the last election, if you just pick a few pockets of the last election, you would see that certain individuals lost in certain places that were almost unbelievable. And if you allow me, because it's public figure, from open sources, they put the word in the presidential villa was won by the PDB. The Victoria Garden sitting, we had the vice president, Rajiv Baju, lead before he became vice president, was won by the PDB. Despite even the vice president campaigning last to house there. So I just give you these two quick examples. And there are those who might even venture to suggest that body language voting voted for PDB. And that's what you want to call it in those days. So when people tell you that your votes may not count, or they will tamper with your votes, or sometimes it is just to intimidate and to discourage people, votes still count in Nigeria and they count significantly. And I think that we need to send this message out for people to know that their votes will count. If their votes will not count, people will not make attempts to buy those votes from there. Or people will not even be thinking like Uche has rightly said, some disgruntled politicians will not be thinking of discouraging people from coming to vote. Because they know that those votes will count. And this is why I think we should be optimistic about elections. The election will be very safe. I don't know how that conviction comes, but I believe it strongly that it will be safe, at least safer than people are trying to project. People are trying to think that it will be. And I'm comfortable going into 2023 with that kind of mindset. And I think everybody should believe that as well. That it's going to be safer than people are trying to make us. Like Bayoh has said, sometimes it's just to make people not come out. It's just to encourage people. I will show you here and all that. But you can only re-election in a place where you are popular. Because if you are one man in a place where 100 others are in support of someone else, there's no way you can snatch a ballot box or do anything. So yeah, and get away with it. You can only do that when you're popular. But we'll take a break now and return. Let me just prepare your mind. We just saw recently here the federal government on Wednesday launched the national animal identification system and traceability system to transform the nation's livestock industry. And one of the reasons they gave, I'm talking to you Bayoh now, is that it will help in the farmer header clashes. So when we return and if we have some time, we'll talk about it and I would like to know what you feel about that. If you think also that this is going to be the solution to the header and farmer clashes in Nigeria. But when we return here, we're hoping to be joined by someone who will be able to talk about the role of unions in all these, especially taking the ASU and federal government case into focus. Stay with us.