 Welcome back, it's still the breakfast and plus, Xavier Africa was set for first major conversation this morning on the beginning of the campaigning season as far as the 2023 elections in Nigeria is concerned. Well, as the campaigning commences today, the Independent National Electro Commission has warned that a political message or slogan must not be tainted with abusive language directly or indirectly likely to injure religious, ethnic, tribal or sectional feelings. Anak has also set abusive intemperators, slanderers or base language or innuendos designed or likely to provoke violent reactions or emotions shall not be employed or used in political campaigns. Now, this is coming from the chairman of the Independent National Electro Commission Nigeria's electoral umpire, Mahmood Yakubu, who threw that caution at a two-digit capacity building workshop for the Inak Press Corps members. These are journalists who cover Inak and who work with Inak on critical issues in the electoral act 2022 and the commission's processes, the innovations, preparations of a commission for the 2023 general election. This took place in Abu Jaya yesterday. We'll remind the media of their constitutional and legal obligations saying that state apparatus, including the media shall not be employed to the advantage of any political party or candidate on any election. I'm just laughing at that. But anyway, the annex chairman also urged all 18 registered political parties to critically study and pay attention to the provisions of the Nigerian constitution and the electoral act, the police act, the public order act and for the proper and peaceful conduct of political campaigns rallies and processions that what are we to expect as a campaign officially kicks off. I'm glad to say joining us just because this is Mukhtar Muhammad, who is a developmental economist. Mukhtar, nice to have you back after some time. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be on your program. Good morning. Yeah, I mean, I laughed while, you know, giving a background to the story of this discussion when I accept, you know, state-owned media apparatus are not to be used to the advantage of one political party. We both know that's not the case. So, I mean, it's been happening over the years at least since the return to democracy in 1999. Let's start from there. So, I mean, is INEC really, do you think they mean what they say are they bulldog that has tooth or teeth or other? Well, again, I say good morning. Ordinarily, they should be a bulldog that has a teeth. But unfortunately, most of the state media, I'm sure the state media are controlled by state governors. And sometimes the opposition parties even lose to give their own campaign slogans and they are not accepted by the state-owned media. I mean, I'm particular about state-owned medias because if you talk about the private media like yours, you've always have the balancing of, in terms of political campaigns. And it's you people that the NBC comes after, they don't go after the state medias because they are controlled by the state governors. So definitely, I wish INEC had those power to do what they say they would do. Unfortunately, I don't think they have. They know what to do, but unfortunately, sometimes they don't just wield a big stick even when you complain about it. Okay, so I mean, let's also get to the part where we talk about what should be the expectations. We have everyone involved in the entire process. You have the electorates. You also have those who are vying for political offices or office. What do you think should be the expectation? Ordinary, you know, when it comes to this, those vying for political offices tend to be the one that set the tune for the electorate. And we've seen that over and over. If they are civil in their behavior, the electorate is tend to be civil. But if some of them make violent comments, it turns to turn violent. And sometimes these comments, you don't see the repercussion during the election processes. You see the repercussion maybe during the time of results are beginning to trip in and you have told them that, look, this is what is going to happen. If it doesn't happen, this is what we are going to do. We saw that play out in, I mean, sometime in 20, I mean, the election before the 2015 election where there was violent protests, especially in the North where some corpus and some people were killed. So we must not forget that, that they all start with the politicians and the way they address their followers definitely determine the tune of events turning out. So hopefully we are not developed democracy now. This will be, we have evolved from moving from one civilian regime to another civilian regime. We have moved from one party to another party. We have even moved from a sitting president being all sit and then we have a new president and a new party. So hopefully we think, I think we are green in leaps and bounds. We last, the 2015 election, we did not see so much of violence and there was chance, I mean, the scale of violence left and right, but it was not. And so we expect that they will not be violent this time because we feel that we are improving by the day. But just before Kofi comes in, I mean, we always talk about, this is the campaign. It's a season where, you know, you have various political parties going out to canvas for votes. It's like you have to market yourself and what you're selling. What are the issues that, you know, this party's political party should be looking out for? And what are the electorate at the end of the day should be looking out for? I think this time the electorate should be more wise because the political parties, I would have said we would have looked at the ideologies. If you are campaigning to develop economy, let me give an example of the most developed democracy, the United States democracy. If you know what to expect from Republican, you know what to expect from Democrats. But unfortunately, we don't have that politics of ideology where we know, okay, if APC come this, what we expect, PDP come this, what we expect, Labour Party come this, what we expect, Agap come this, what we expect. Unfortunately, we don't have that because we see the time to tell the electorate what the electorate wants to hear without even giving them a roadmap. For me, I think lack of ideology, they seem to tell us all the right thing without giving us the roadmap on how to achieve it. So if I have advice for the electorate is listen to them very carefully. What is the roadmap? You can just tell us you give us power and you expect us to be like, how are you going to give us power? What are the strategy that you are going to give us power? You want to, you tell the electorate that you are going to build more roads for them. How are you going to build the roads? Where are the funds, especially in an economy like this? How are you going to mobilize funds? Those are critical questions that the electorate tend to ask, should be asking the politicians or those that are fighting for elected people. Unfortunately, again, you go to political diary, becomes a place for jamboree. They just come bringing musicians. Everybody's saying and said, oh, you have one. Nobody seems to come up with anything after the, so I think the electorate should be wise this time to ask the politicians what they want to be. Especially now, we know our problem. We know we lack infrastructure. We know we lack power. We know there's hunger in the land. How are you going to address the issue? We know there is, the exchange rate to the narrator, the dollar has gone high. How are we going to do that? We know that when we come recession, how are you going to address recession? Are you going to remove first subsidy? If you remove subsidy, where are you going to put them? We need to be, we need to rub mines with them. Let's see a politician that will come and tell us the right. Remember, 2015, before now, we had the electorate telling us, look, first subsidy will go and that and that. And at the end of the day, it never went. Today, we are here. We say we have power 24 hours. Up to this moment, we are still struggling to provide power. There's always collaboration, national greed. So we should be intentional this time in asking them, how are you going to do it? We are tired of you telling us, generally know what the problems of Nigerians are. And again, the electorate should not go and collect bag of rice and these and put their campaigning on it. I mean, it's time we begin to look at a policy-driven campaign. Campaign that is not void of hatred. It's a country that is driven by value. What am I coming to add to the people? All right. Mutha, interesting thoughts there. I ask again, I ask again, is I like a toothless bulldog? Even when we see Ma'amori Akubu saying these things, does he mean them? And will the political parties be convinced and be willing to take his words seriously? Well, I'm asking this is because we have seen over the past few weeks and months that candidates and their supporters, some, I don't want to commit a fallacy, some candidates and their supporters have engaged in campaigns before 28th of September. I don't know if you're going to nod your head in agreement. Is it attending fora where they're meant to speak about their, present themselves to professional bodies like NBA, the LCCI, that's the Legals Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Niger Bar Association, et cetera, they've campaigned. She will look at the billboards springing around left, right, and center. In fact, some political parties were fighting or supporters are fighting government and regarding their own billboards, saying they're not being allowed to put billboards around the country. And these billboards have the logo of the parties. These billboards have the picture of the candidates and these billboards have the slogan of the election in the year 2023. They don't have votes. I know some candidates, like I think I've seen the APC president put his face on the billboard, but they just wrote Emmy Locom. I don't know if that qualifies as a campaign. That was what they put there, near the third million bridge, near the axis of the University of Lagos. But some candidates have had their party, you know, you know, insignia. So what do you say to that? And then also talk about it as this concerns our next seriousness in ensuring that the rules are adhered to. Yeah, let me start with, you know, remember that some of these billboards you're seeing, sometimes most of them were talking about when they were vying to be elected by their parties. That's what they would tell you that some of these billboards were erected when they were doing their own primaries. They had to campaign to their delegated vote for them. That's when some of these billboards were erected. And after some time, after some of them won, they refused to move the billboard. But I cannot show you that in some starting from today, you see some of these billboards being replaced with the re-candidate billboards. Now, you need to understand the Nigerian Contest and what we talk about campaign. Nigerian Contest, placing a pollster, placing a billboard is not campaign. That's in the Nigerian Contest. You talk about the Nigerian Bar Association. That should be the highest legal body, the body with the highest gathering of liga's minds. They are the one that hosted them and tell them, come and tell us what your manifesto is. What do you want to do? So if you look at it from that angle, you realize that when you talk about campaign Nigeria, they tend to tell you started campaigns, when we gather together, when we see them come to talk to us, when we have that jumboree, when we are in the stadium. I mean, I had one of the presidential parties, Spokeman just this morning tweeting that we just opened our campaign office in Kaxina. Look at the number of people that gathered for the opening of our campaign office. That is the way the Nigerian politician doesn't take campaign as the start of campaigns where we have the gathering of people, we begin to see what our manifestos are. Some parties or some of their supporters actually have the presidential candidate, his running mate, the slogan of the campaign, the insignia or the logo of the party. And then something about voting for this person in 2023 on billboards in certain parts of the country. This is not about primary, it's about, yeah. It's there, that's what I'm saying. It's there, but I've just told you that sometimes people, for them, people is not campaign, campaigns when you gather them together. To you, is it campaign? It's what I want to know. It's campaign, that many, and to INAG, it should be campaign, but the only time INAG will the big stick, if you understand that, INAG only will the big sticks when they realize that the court has given a pronouncement. The day one political party not takes one other political party to court and said, you have infringed on the electoral act, then the court gives a judgment, INAG thinks to act. You have not seen INAG in the literary acts. They will tell you, we are waiting for court judgment. So I think if you look at that from that, and then you see that INAG is too class. If you look at that from that angle, they wait for the judiciary to give them the power to judge. Have you seen INAG take any electorate, I mean any political party, anything to court that you have infringed on that, right? They never do that. They always wait for the political party or the politician to take their self to court and then attempt to be the ones that implement the judgment in some instant. And in some instant, they will tell you, look, we have to wait, there's an appeal and that. So definitely if you look at me from that perspective, I don't think INAG has had the power because indeed we call them independence and electoral commission, but you mustn't forget that they still depend from funding from the government. And the government in power could decide are the ones that are, I mean, that even put some of the INAG commissioners or directors in those positions. So definitely sometime the loyalty is treated and you've seen incident where somebody was a commissioner for INAG in a particular state, then he goes to his own state and said, I want to resign from INAG. I want to campaign, I want to become a representative of a political party. We're not talking about years, you're talking about months, just months after. So definitely you should know that we are still in the learning democracy and we're not seeing INAG, even in the use of what? Even in the use of what? Violence and everything. Political parties are supposed to be punished. Even their funding up in this moment, they don't come out to, INAG is supposed to edit their funding. It's supposed to publish name of people that have given these political party funds how they're getting their funding. But up to this moment, since the inception of INAG, whether Atayu Jigar or Mahmoods, they have never been a publication of, this is how the political party were funded during the selection. Well, let's move away from that particular one now. Let's just see look at it now. If you talk about slogans and conversations, not being ethnic or tribal, you find out that the social media space gives all of that leverage, really, especially if you go on Twitter. So how can these things be? Really, we know that at some point, the government was big on saying, we need to put a control or regulate the social media space. There was a ban on Twitter, however, it was lifted prior to the elections. So my question is, how can these things really be? How can INAG and every other person's stakeholders involve control the space of conversation or campaign, especially when it's on social media? INAG, that's INAG. INAG, I think it's for INAG to do that because in developed economies, when those things happened, it's either INAG right to Twitter to say, look, this comment is offensive and we need it to remove. And I think they've done that if you look at the presidential election in the United States of America, it came in time that even one of the presidential aspirants was removed from Twitter because they felt that most, even from Twitter, from on social media network, because they felt that he was infringing on, I mean, his campaign were violent and so he was removed. But again, that has to do with the security. And again, unfortunately for Nigeria and the security approaches cannot be set to be devolved, taking sides. You see, I keep saying, you see a dozen of these in a former chief of army staff, all of a sudden he's retired and now he's now also a governor aspirant in the state or he's now an ambassador being appointed by the political party. So you realize that it's very, very difficult for us to put our political differences aside. About ethnic, ethnicity is part of Nigeria electorate because even when the electorate are not thinking ethnicity, the politicians are telling us, you are doing this because we are, the only thing I tell electorate is that why is it that the politicians are quick to point to us when it comes to our tribal or our religious background but when it comes to them being perpetuating corrupt tendency, they tend to come together. They don't think whether you're a Muslim, they don't think whether you're a Christian, they don't think whether you're from one ethnic group. You see that in a particular corrupt case, you will see that various ethnic group will be represented in those cases. It's either somebody that funded it, it's somebody that collected the money, it's somebody that initiated it, it's somebody that runs the company. They are not all from the same ethnic group. So the politicians tend to take advantage of all and unfortunately because of lack of education in the part of the electorate, we don't seem to know where these people are coming from. When you talk about power sheep, when you see Ben Shartan about power sheep, it's when their own power is not, the power is not going to shift to them. They have seen it all over, it's not coming to them. They begin to use ethnicity, sometimes they use religious. That is not to say that I support whereby we don't have balance in terms of, okay, maybe it should be a Muslim, Muslim, Muslim. But just quickly now, Moctek, what should be the focus, the content of campaign for political parties, right? What should he be about? It should be about issues. It should be driven by issues. Issues that have to deal with the economy, issues that have to deal with education, issues that have to do with infrastructure. That should be what, that should be their focal point. They shouldn't come and begin to tell us somebody is going to say it is not entering private jet, all of a sudden we are seeing him coming down for a private jet. That is not the issue. You shouldn't come and be telling us that the religious leaders should think about salvation. That is not the issue. The issue is what are you going to do? What are you planning to do? Why are you going to bring all Nigerians together since we are divided around religious and you have religious space and you have identified it? Why are you going to bring it together? I mean, a lot of things should be issue-driven, not based on petty things like the clothes you wear or the shoe you wear or the car you drive or the airplane you drive, the campaign venue or who you are meeting. I think campaign should be issue-driven, not petty-driven. I would like to speak about the role of media in all of this because media is going to be a playing field. It's where most of the campaign will take place. What are your thoughts on the role the media has played in previous campaigning seasons or periods? Because it's very critical. Whilst the INEC chairman is saying that political parties should be aware of the electoral act of the provisions of the constitution regarding campaigning and of course of the police act, et cetera, you know. I think that the media needs to be aware of these as well and that we play a critical role. Do you agree with this? And what can you say about the role the media has played over the years? Has the media helped the situation or made it worse? What do you think the media should take away from all that the INEC chair is saying? I think the media should be the one that should be being the watchdog for the electorate because when you're talking about media, we're talking about both social media, we're talking about your electronic media, we're talking about the print media. Like you have said during your introduction, you realize that when it comes to the electronic media, even in the private media, like private media, there are particular private media that are driven towards the political parties, whether they are for PDP or they're for APC, there are particular media that are driven towards that. If it comes to the print media, also we see, but when it comes to the state-owned media, we definitely know the sitting governor have power over there. So the media, unfortunately, the media has a big role to play and unfortunately they're not playing that role, especially the state media that have seems to have larger co-brages into the rural area or the private media have been the only one that are being wheeled the big stick, any time issues like that comes up. You see that even the federal government, national-owned media, sometimes seem to take sides with the federal government and all with the particular political party that's in power and nobody seems to wheel the big stick on them. So for me, I think it has been a divide and rule or what we call somehow touchable, some untouchable. So if the media are able to, I mean, they clamp down on when you have done something wrong, when you have gone against the electoral act, then we'll begin to see a little bit of sanity. But I can say that in that little space, the medias have been able, especially the private media, like your own organization and other private media organization, have tried, even in a difficult situation, to be very neutral because they are the ones that will bring you both parties, both representative of any party and want to tell what are you bringing to the table. But the state-owned medias, you don't see that play out. So for me, I think if you want to give a kudo, you have to give it to the private medias for doing what they ought to do, even in a very difficult situation. Sometime when they go against some of this party in power, the NBC seems to clamp down on them and when the state media goes, they turn the blind eye towards what they are doing. So I think we should say the private media have done very well. They can do more if their business is not threatened. For every business, private media is all about business. When my business is threatened, I tend to look at my investment and I'm knowing that the government is very powerful. If you revoke my license, I will tend to be cautious in what I do. But if they are giving a level playing field and they realize that, look, it's a level playing field, anybody that goes against the law will be punished. I'm sure, I'm very, very sure the Nigerian media will be in the forefront for us to begin to enjoy the dividend of democracy. Because you are the people that have the record of these people. When they say they will do this, they will do that. So you'll be able to bring it out. You promise us this, you promise us this, but you didn't do it because you have it recorded. But unfortunately, I don't envy where you people sit. It's a very difficult city. Talking about the role of the media. We have a situation, I would say, we have three kinds of candidates when we talk about the media. You have those who've been doing interviews left, right, and center. We have those who are looking for an opportunity to have media interviews so they can talk about national issues. Because when it's not campaign period, we invite them to talk about national issues. And then we have those who the media is looking for, but are nowhere to be found and not accessible or available for media interviews. I can give you an example. Oh, they are accessible to their spokesman. Well, yes, you're right. You're saying it. I can give you an example. I think Attico Buwakar has given just one interview. If I'm not mistaken, that is with one of the TV stations in the country. And that was even conducted at his home in the comfort of his home or somewhere. Bola Mettinobu hasn't, I've not seen any interview so far. And Peter Obi has been here then everywhere. You have the rest who are looking, Oshawa has also been around, but you have the rest who are looking for that opportunity or even accusing other parties of inviting them. So I want to talk about this and also quickly talk about the debating where some candidates refuse to attend debates. Just quickly, please, because we're out of time. Okay, definitely. I think those people are using the social media space. And if you look at what you have just said, you look at we are still dealing with the old brick politicians. They are shining away from interviews. They are shining, whereas I say the media have a very big role to play. It comes on issues. And these two candidates, Oshawa, Bola Mettinobu and Attico Buwakar have been using their spokesman. I think their spokesmen have been more vocal than them. They have been all over the space, social media space, broadcasting houses, they've granted interviews. But the only presidential candidate that has gone from, I can say that gone from one media house to another, they've been going to global media house is the Labour Party candidate. And you know why he's doing that, because the youth are seem to be pushing. The youth are seem to be the vanguard of that movement and seem to say, look, we need to hear from you. We need to push you to this space. People need to know what you are bringing to the table because we are trying to change the old guard. For those that have not been given the opportunity, I think they have the social media handles to work on that. That's what I feel. So for the debate, I think debate is not mandatory. And that's unfortunately, INEC has not made the debate mandatory. So you choose to attend or you choose not to attend. And we've seen people not come for debate, win selection. Let me tell you the truth I've seen about debate. Once you are the popular candidate, you have made on ground, you don't tend to come to debate. But when you are very unpopular, you want to come to debate to tell us what you want to do. So that's for me, that's how the debate is. Well, Muktak, we have to go now. I wish we could continue this conversation, but we're in the season and this conversation will not end until 2023. And it will definitely continue. Thank you so much for being part of the breakfast. It is a pleasure. Good morning again. All right, Muktak Mohamed is a developmental economist and he's been talking about our expectations as the campaigns begin today. We'll take a break and when we return, we'll continue with the next conversation. Stay with us.