 It's 24 hours to Election Day, February 25, but welcome to our election studios as we begin tonight and talk about INEC, of laying the fears of cancellation and assisting the polls we'll hold. Also, we will be having a feel of what's going on at INEC offices from our correspondents across Lagos. Also, we'll be taking a look at government's reasons for the arrest of pro-Biafran agitator Simon Epak and we'll be talking about the effects of violence on the outcome of the elections. I'm Mary Annakul, welcome to The Ballot. My name is Nyam Gul Aggadjian, I'm glad to be here with you. Alright, interesting, it promises to be 24 hours of back to back information for the elections. I'm sure that you're excited. Well, everybody's excited in Nigeria, even the people that are not voting are really excited. I know. It's a great moment for us and I hope we get it right this time. Apparently, everybody keeps saying, every election cycle, that this is going to be a watershed moment. We hear that every time, but we don't hear it. Yes, but we've not seen the kind of new entrance into the election cycle like we've seen now. The massive registration of the youths has never happened the way it has happened this time around. So, no matter the excitement, excitement has always been for the people who are regular voters. Now, we have people who have never voted, forming almost a majority of the people who registered. I hope they got their PVCs anyway, after registering. Well, let's have a feel of what's going on in Ikeja right now. Our correspondent Paul George is standing by to brief us on what's happening there. Good evening, Paul. How are you? Great. You are in Ikeja. What exactly have you noticed while you were there at the INAC office? What is the latest? Okay, when we got to Ikeja, the INAC office, we made a lot of call members and other staff who have been gathered here to move to different words of this for the election tomorrow. The INAC electoral officer here in Ikeja, Gabriel Tyre, when I spoke to him, I asked him how prepared are they. And he explained to me, he said they are well prepared for this election. And at the other moment, there were a lot of, you know, adult staff who are still waiting, who are still waiting to move out, to go to their, what, you know, waiting for their SBO, that is supervisory presiding officers, to take them to their different Iraq center. You know, we have, we have right now, as I'm speaking with you, we have members of the Nigerian police force, you know, you know, guarding this environment, you know, to also forstall law and order here. Yeah, go ahead. Paul, right now you are at the INAC office, right? Yes, he is. Yes, yes, yes, I'm at the INAC office in Ikeja. Yeah, I'm just interested in the fact that at the background, we're not seeing a rowdy crowd and all that. Those are things that usually happen, you know, at this time of the year. So what do you think made it so peaceful the way it is? Is there anything new that has not been done before? Oh, fantastic. That's good. You know, we have Nigerian police force here, members of the Nigerian police force, you know, they are here to ensure that everyone, you know, go and do everything in order and we also have the, what's it called, the road safety. They are all around here. So now you mentioned something that you feel, looking at my background, that the core members, a lot of people, you know, have left. Yes, they have left because they've gone to their rock centers to be prepared because they're going to slip over, they're going to slip over, you know, then from there, they move to their unit. You know, according to Gabriel Tyre, the electoral officer here in Ikeja, he said they have over 600 polling units in this Ikeja, local government. OK. All right. Paul, thank you very much. We'll be getting back to you for more updates. Thank you for speaking with us. All right. Thank you. Well, barely six hours to the forthcoming 2023 general elections, of course, the presidential election. The Independent National Electoral Commission, I like, has a laid fears of cancellation and insisted that the poll will hold as planned on February 25. I like Chairman McMood, Yakuza, disclosed this on Friday at a media briefing in Abuja. His assurances came a few hours before the presidential poll started. Slated for Saturday, I beg your pardon, February 25, 2023. Now, according to him, there has been no insecurity issue involving the personnel and materials deployed by the commission. Joining us live to discuss the voter readiness for the polls is our correspondent Emmanuel Olubo-Bokong. Emmanuel, thank you very much for joining us. Good evening. Yeah, I'm good. Yeah. Emmanuel, what is the situation where you are right now? OK. Right now, in the chair of the chair of GRMA, we are able to speak with the voters about whether they were able to get their polling units and also whether there were challenges associated with them getting to the origin or on the defined polling unit. But speaking with some of them, I realized, I was able to get information that the polling units, irrespective of the distance or server, they were able to locate it. Some of them said there were no challenges. But speaking with one particular person, he said that the polling unit was far from his residence. But today, while it was a German prayer today, on Friday, he said that the imams spoke to him and preached to him, saying that the retrospective or whatever it is that they should be able to go and exercise their civic duty. So that's the hard, without the hard change of mind. He said, irrespective of the distance it was in my trekking, far distance, to definitely go cast his vote. So that has been challenging the situation over here with voters and also with staffs of other. Thank you very much for speaking with us. We will come back to you if there be any breaking stories or any more things to report on. We will take a quick break when we return. We'll be talking about the situation of things in Finland. Yesterday, the news was that one of the masterminders of the insecurity in the South East, talking about Simon Ekba, was arrested by Finnish police. Yeah, and there's been propaganda anyway. Some people may be loyalists to him, now saying that he has been released and back to Finland and he's enjoying himself and all that. But I'd like to commend Finland. I'd like to commend the government of Nigeria and even Ohanez and Dibo, that all people that raised alarm, that this person is causing havoc back home here. And proactive measures led to what has happened now. And we'll be the better for it anyway. We'll be having some of the guests join us to discuss this in a moment. But we'll take a quick break. It's still our election studio's The Ballot 2023. Stay with us. It is unusually traffic free here. Plus, TV News catches up with some Nigerians who give different reasons for wanting to cast their ballots. Why not? Why not? You can see I'm just calling back from work. And I have my PVC to vote for the candidate I won. You can see. Yeah, so I'm praying, let the gods help us and reach the the final day for the election. And I will know the candidate that we vote. I'm not someone that is actually scared. Whatever comes up, whatever it might be, I will stand and vote. In so many years, I haven't casted a vote. But this time around, I am definitely going to cast my vote. I'm not scared of anything. I'll come out and vote. We should be ready for change. We can continue here. We can't continue like this. As we keep on going in a circle, we have to change the order, like seriously. If not, we'll just continue suffering. There has been a high level of preparation towards the elections, especially from the part of the election, Ompai, INEC. Many believe this is a chance to have an Nigeria of their dream. As for the first time, the country is adopting an electronically conducted federal elections. A change in this country. I'm actually tired of the way things are going. The situation is now it's not really for me. It's about, you know, everybody seems to be leaving the country because things are not going well. But those of us that have not had the opportunity to probably leave, should stay back and do the needful. The good things come with a bit of inconvenience. And what you look at is the intense behind it. Is the intent just to make the masses suffer? Quite a right, the masses are suffering because of it. But if it will help us curtail vote-buying, it will help put those corrupt politicians in check, desparados in check. So be it. I will come out to vote. Well, for the cashless policy now, that reason why we are stuck fully in the house for the families issue. So after the election, I'll be with you. For free and fair elections, you understand. But I wish Nigeria all the best. And this time, accrediting voters and voting will take place simultaneously with the use of the beavers' machines. The stakes are high. Destin Mama, plus TV News. Welcome back. It's still the ballot 2023. And we are still looking at the situation of things in and across the country on this situation of election violence, free election violence, vote-buying. Let's talk about vote-buying. We've seen videos from river states, emanating from river states where the police had, the FCC, I beg your pardon, had napped one of the PDP... Yeah, House of Reps member. The PDP representing Potakot 2 constituency. Yes. And Honorable Chitin Yereigwe. Well, first of all, Bajabiamila is talking about the fact that they need to remove Honorable from their names. Maybe this is the time to start. Because this must have been a very dishonorable act. Very, very dishonorable act. I mean, he was photographed with wads of cash. And use, you know, this money. And it wasn't Nigerian money. Dollars. Foreign currency. Dollars, like $500,000. And we are suffering the way we're suffering. We've seen another video just this evening about where someone was trying to buy votes here in Lagos state wads of money. New 1000 Naira notes. Exactly. So much money. Money that we cannot even find. $5,000 to withdraw. And people, the sharks, now the POS sharks, are taking advantage and destroying businesses, destroying lives as it were. Unfortunately, it's not their fault. But we're not going to get into that conversation because, you see, they also have to buy the votes. We won't even finish. Nobody would have thought that in 2023 they would need to buy Naira with Naira. Yeah, we're asking how much is exchange rate in your area? Naira to Naira. It's not even dollars. It's really disheartening. Yeah, it's very, very disheartening. And to think that some people are just holding this money. And I think what's most disheartening about the Honourable Chiniri Grace situation is that he's an Honourable Member of the House of the Assembly. National Assembly, I beg your pardon, is a member of the People's Democratic Party which is ruling in river states. Which is ruling in river states. I would think that being that Governor Wiki is called, you know, the Mr. Projects and that the state would not have to worry or the government would not have to worry about vote buying but this is a situation that we're looking at today. Unfortunately. Well, and another thing is, INEC defines vote buying as inducement. Inducement. On that day of the election. And I think that's a very shallow definition of that vote. Yes, because I have seen a lot of pundits speak about this issue of vote buying and they say vote buying has already occurred in this election day. I got calls from the village, for instance, that there are people who are going around sharing wrappers and sharing money. And they are Governors who started an empowerment program like two months ago. Just two weeks, Seth. Some people started two weeks house to house. And they'll tell you that it will end when this administration, after the election and all that. And it tells you that it has to do with the elections and you're collecting this money. And if you say four people in the polling unit, that means four families have been affected. For those four families will have like ten people in the families and then ten people will have influencers within the community and all that. They've already bought that community as it were. And it started long before now but EFCC, INEC and all the relevant authorities are not even looking at that. Well, they seem to be alive to the responsibilities just in the nick of time for some people. You know, I mean, they're now awake because the elections are just around the corner. But let's talk about the voter now, the electorate, because I want to talk about how decisive we should be or questioning certain things. Because you see, if I have sat through an administration for four to eight years and you didn't think it necessary to initiate an empowerment program all this well, but then months to elections, weeks to elections, you come up with this empowerment program, this giving scheme, you know. We should be some critical thinking is to come into play. But then, of course, many people would also say poverty has been weaponized. And so, I mean, the other question... I don't buy the poverty thing. Exactly. But then there are people who have that school of thought that, oh, poverty has been weaponized. If you're a hungry person and you see food, you're definitely going to jump on it. What if that food is laced with poison? Should I not think first before I jump in? I think when we talk about poverty, we shouldn't be talking about poverty, cash poverty, material poverty. It's a poverty of the mind. Yeah, because I've seen people who pack their vehicles, for instance, and come to struggle for 20,000 that was thrown into a crowd while you're packing your car. That means you are well to do before you can have a car. And then you're still struggling with the people that people are saying are poor. That's not poverty. I've seen a place where you go to that place, food is not a problem. And then people are handing out 15 IRAs, lowest 15 IRA and 100 IRAs, and they're voting for someone. It's like we would say, not be jujuvi that. I saw a video, a report on Doche Vela done by a Nigerian, and she went to, I think one of the states in the North, if I'm not mistaken, a Damo estate. And people voted for as low... People's votes were bought for as low as 15 IRAs. Good. I've seen that too. A school teacher is sickling upon himself to educate people in that area because of the level of illiteracy. But then of course, he's also not just blaming it on ignorance, he's blaming it on the fact that people have, like you said, a poverty mindset. And it's not that they do not know that what they're doing is wrong, but they feel that that's the only hope that they have. And his duty is to one way or the other change that mindset. And he's doing it every day. He's telling people that 15 IRAs is unable to even buy you a plate of food or the meat that you would eat in the food, let alone take you for four years. So what happens after the election? Are you able to see these people? Are they accessible to you? Can you call them to order? Can you ask for accountability if you've taken 15 IRAs because it's literally put a plaster or a cellotape over your lips? At this point, I think the elitist class has not done enough to educate everybody because if your mind is educated enough, your brain is educated enough, someone said education makes you unfit to be enslaved. So if your mind is educated enough, you are supposed to be the person to take this evangelism as a way to the villages and all that because this is where it actually happens. You can't expect someone to buy votes for even 5,000 Naira in VI, for instance. But you will be shocked because there are people who are giving these monies, the people who are foot soldiers to these so-called politicians. It'll shock you that they're people like you and me. Yeah, but they're not giving to the people in VI. That's what I'm saying. And unfortunately, this is where you find the population. We're helping ourselves. We're not doing enough. We know what's right, but we'd rather, because of whatever reasons, enable these so-called corrupt politicians so really, how ready are we for that change? We are not really ready because in the 2019 election, there were a lot of people that are now fighting wars in the social media with themselves. Some of them actually contested. They ran for president. Some of them ran for president. And they're among the people who are supporting candidates that we see or we perceive that shouldn't even rule us. So how are these people sincere to the people? Are they therefore personal interests or they really wanted to help our nation? 2023 has proven that a lot of them were just there for their selfish reason. And when politicians in Nigeria say, what matters is interest. It really sets me off because the interest they're talking about is not the national interest. They're talking about personal interest and they do it with their full chest as we would say in Nigeria and it's really disappointing. I want us to go to talk about the situation in Finland and talk about the state of violence that has taken hold of the Southeast in general. You and I are going to panter in that. But in the meantime, we're going to be joined by our correspondent Loretta Ciorgo who's standing by to give us a feel on what's happening in Magburu area of Lagos State and I think Festak. So let's see if we can get across to Loretta. Loretta, good evening. Thank you for joining us. Can you hear me? Marianne, good evening. I'm good. Good evening. Great. What's happening in Magburu? Yes, yes. Welcome to our election studios. Now, give us a feel of what's happening in Magburu and have you been speaking to people and is there some sort of excitement or doubt or maybe fair coming from the people as they get ready for tomorrow's elections? Now, from what I've been able to gather, the general feel is that of excitement? Is that of enthusiasm to go into this poll tomorrow and people are just ready to choose their candidates come tomorrow morning? And you know what's amazing is that the roads are not too busy as it usually would be. The reason for this, I do not know but I know that fillers are also that want to stay away from anything that can cause them harm. In case there's any breakdown of law and order, right? And from Magburu area, which is within Oku state and borders, Lagos, the fill, as I said earlier, is that of excitement and enthusiasm. And voters are already trying to find out where their polling units are. In fact, as you can see, I'm in a vehicle and we're trying. We've been roving from Magburu and then down into Lagos to also feel the pulse of the people. And the driver of this particular vehicle has told me that he doesn't even know where his polling unit is. And because another person who I spoke with earlier told me that he had to take time out to go look for his polling unit where he's going to vote and found out that the polling unit wasn't where he was told. And because he was frustrated and because he also knows that I'm a journalist, he had to put a call through to me to ask me if I have an idea of the polling units within Magburu. And I told him some of them but he said he was frustrated at that time and that he was not going to look for the polling unit anymore until tomorrow if he now decides to move up. But I think the feel is that I am going to vote. Come what may. So for these two men that I've been able to speak with, I think that's the general feel. People want to come out to cast their ballots. They want a new Nigeria. They want a real change. When I mean a real change, they want a real change that can speak for their livelihood, the economy, infrastructure, education, health, the health system. Name it. Let's talk about the issue of information dissemination both from INEC and the media because of course it's the information that INEC rolls out that the media feeds to the public. Judging from what your driver, the driver of the vehicle has spoken about, do you think that INEC has done due diligence in terms of especially the fact that some of these polling units were reassigned are known to some of the voters? I can speak for INEC but I can speak as a journalist. Reports that we have received from INEC is that they've been able to pass this message to the public. Now the public, we need to now look at the public who has heard INEC and the public that has not heard INEC. So that's what I see right now with the status who have been able to accommodate the information and run with it. But I think INEC has done the beats that they should which is to speak to the public about the various changes that have taken place in terms of changing polling units, taking one from another, fixing people in other polling units. Now do the people know where their new polling units are? I think that will be out tomorrow. We'll see more of that tomorrow because right now what we can see is that people are just trying to find out where their exact polling units are and to identify with the place to be satisfied that it is trackable because again this is another issue. Somebody told me that if the polling unit is too far from where it lives, he may not go to cast his ballot. But of course these people are being encouraged to say that if you are called for a team you have set your vote to count. So no matter the distance I think you should do that as a sacrifice for Nigeria and for your generation and future generations to come. Well Larissa we look forward to some of the things that will be covered tomorrow and all of the information that will be coming from the different places that you go to in the polling unit. Thank you so much, we appreciate it. That's right Adan. I think you can identify me with my face cap. Thank you. I'm not a security threat. I need to put this out now. I'm not a security threat. I'm a journalist and my face cap. I don't know why. I'm sure by the time you start speaking English it definitely will end. Stay safe wherever you are Larissa. Thank you very much. She touched on something about the roads being free and it didn't start this evening. It started in the morning when we were coming to work. Everywhere was very free and the vehicles were moving. I think we owe that not just to security but we owe that to the fact that that's what I want to believe that people are spending the time looking for where they are supposed to go and vote and some of them are resting so that tomorrow might be along with. I think most of them have travelled to their different polling units. That explains why the roads were like that. Let's believe and we had a security expert this morning who said that from all indications tomorrow will be relatively very peaceful. And we all want to believe that because we have no reason to believe that there would be any chaos or uprisings or riots. I don't think it's necessary because I think the average voter is ready to cast their votes peacefully and make sure that it counts. We'll take a quick break. It's still our election studios. The ballot 2023. I'm sure people are wondering where's the plus politics? It's right here. And this is where we have this is what we admit I'm a forced into until elections are over. We'll take a quick break and when we come back we'll talk about Finland and then of course we will be joined by an election consultant who's going to talk to us about the issue of violence before, during and after elections and how it could affect the country. Stay with us.