 Amit calls for a third force following the largely poor performance of the two major political parties in managing the country's resources to come up. Former Speaker of the House of Representatives Gali Umana Ava says the third force being promoted will not work. Well joining us to discuss this is the Public Affairs Analyst Ambrus Ibuki. Thank you very much Ambrus Ibuki for joining us. You're welcome. Great. Great. So I mean we're all very familiar with the third force and the first time we heard of the third force the name of the former president of Lusia Gong Abasanja was thrown around as one who was you know putting together the third force but he did say that he was not he had nothing to do with the third force and then we of course had another front that was being pushed by Professor Patutomi we've seen the likes of Femi Fallena and the likes of Abakoba all of them you know pushing for a different front to somewhat upstage the existing big political parties but the former speaker here is coming out to say that this will not work why do you think he's taking that position? Is it that the PDP and the APC are too powerful and that they probably are the most dominating and nobody or any other political party or any other coalition can upstage them? Well first of all I don't like the name the third force the use of force in a democracy is something of it's an anathema it doesn't all go well it doesn't sound well you cannot be talking about a force in a democracy even the Nigerian police that had force in its place the Nigerian police force has removed the force in its name in a bit to sound very democratic and friendly and then we the politicians are now coming with a name with force in it so that means it is contradictory. Secondly who are the members of the third force I mean those who are the second and last members of the third force are people who are actually politicians from the various there are politicians from the from the CPC from the ANPB from the PDP from the ADACACN from ABGAB from all the conglomeration of the different political parties these are the same people that maybe because of what these don't those don't unless all the other they were disenchanted and left their former parties and certain politicians are coming back again to say they want to form a third force so the former a secret house of reps may have some information that is working on because these are politicians they know each other they know themselves but what we are talking about actually to strengthen the systems because whether it's from a third force a fifth force if the system that shows up candidates for politics from political parties and their political positions if the system is not reformed if this we are just going to be changing nomenclature I'm not actually arriving at any better structure for our people so whether you change nomenclature you form the political party call it whatever name it is same people that will still be a part of so we have to be conscious of how to build our political system so that it will checkmate whoever the host public office and that is the only solution let me let me go to some of the things that the former speaker said and I'd like to quote him directly he said it is still being explored but a third force is very difficultly or difficult he said to attain a standard today he's also saying that for that to be able to work out it will entail massive appeal to the people and there must be a deployment of a high degree of material resources which a lot of people that have been contracted were reluctant to give given the nature of the political system he says already this trust has been created by way and manner of 16 political parties and how they have played out in the last 20 years so it is of course getting difficult and it appears that only recourse or the only recourse is for people of good conscience and mind to come into the main parties and attempt to reform them so I'll ask you who are these people of good conscience that have the not just the persona but the wherewithal to cause a reform in the political party and I just like to I know that you know this but then of course the PDP the APC are having their own internal factors which they have been taking each other to court back and forth and so and that's because again if we look at it really with some microscopic lens we can tell that there are many strong men within the party you know everybody's trying to you know have a fisk of sorts so who are these people where are they going to come from that will have such power to be able to cause a reform when the system in itself is already tainted and there is a populace on downtown that said that if you ask me that who are black that if you ask me that question who am I expecting to am I expecting to answer it who is the right person you see politics in Nigeria have to be re-engineered by people of good conscience let me use the same language who are these people the people of good conscience start the problem we have is that people professionals who are people who are trying to bring new ideas into politics want to start at the top they want to contest for presidency senator and red I think the social re-engineering of our electoral system or what good people can be implicated is when they go go to your local government go to your world let's start from there go to your local government go to your house of assembly start from because it is people from these places that are true of from their walks from the local government and state to start having national positions we are we have not been able to realize that so when people come with ideas they want to jump they want to be they want to contest for governorship they want to contest for house of rep and senate and all those lofty offices if we don't start on the bottom to start re-engineering the mindset of political of our political landscape first of all the electorate and then good men coming and good men and women coming out to tell the electorate how things are give them examples at the look at the grassroot level then we cannot give them examples at the state or national level so to an extent I think a lot of advice right in the sense that for you the elections are just few months away we don't have up to two years for that and then we want to talk about coming up with a new political system that can challenge APC or PDP it's more like a mere wishful thinking the only thing that can make it work was what happened to PDP before the 2015 election where some disgruntled elements in PDP had to leave and join forces with the emerging APC with the emerging alliance between the CPC and ACN and that's why that type attack of agents was what made them to be able to even plunge power if the PDP was not divided then I don't think they would have lost it so the advice right it is not going to be a tea party and for now we don't need this thought force or whatever for all we need is to strengthen the system we have and make the electorate have more enlightened so that they can make better charges come in 2020 I'm curious because looking around it's very even it's pretty even difficult for you as a political analyst to point out who these persons of good conscience because we keep it's easy for us to throw around these words people of good conscience people who have the best interests of Nigeria at heart but then it's very difficult when it comes down to pointing out or calling naming names it's very difficult for us to do that so does this mean or does this reflect badly on us as a society that we probably are the problem and we do not have these men and women who can actually who we can point to as men and women of good conscience because everybody seemed to have an interest of sorts and not necessarily the interest of the people at heart does this not reflect badly on us as a people well we can we have good people in Nigeria we have great men we have great women we have Nigerians who have you know excelled in their children and diverse be it professionally be it in sports be it academically administratively we have them everywhere now because the way our political structure is is established some of those people may not have what we call the financial powers or the financial power where we vow to go to political space and contest and that is actually the problem for party funding in Nigeria is an issue the individual fund what about crowdfunding i'm sorry i'm sorry to speak over you what about crowdfunding i'll tell you why i'm asking this and this is not taking a jab at whoever but we see fans of certain people from a certain reality show crowdfunding to buy them houses to buy them cars but then when it comes to the people who are going to lead us so that we can have a better tomorrow we do not see that same energy so again i ask are we the problem crowdfunding will only work more if we have independence candidates as for from now the law does not allow for independence candidates and that is where we make sure i'm sorry but when president bohari was running for this office there seemed to be some similar thing like a crowdfunding where he said uh nigerians gave money uh you know to help fund his campaign and all of that um so it's not like it's illegal under the nigerian constitution is it it's not i mean when the when the president was competitive 14 don't have publicity stuff like the one that wants yeah but is it is it illegal is it illegal but is it illegal that was not what he he executed his election with we saw the president then having moving in privileges of people like the governor of the river state and the the leader of eighties as you are the king of war and the rest and then well a lot of money watches was brought into as elections are expensive everywhere in the world but this is the funding that is a problem so the crowdfunding you are talking about we're not to work because if if there is a candidate an independent candidate that people trust that doesn't belong to any political party people can select crowdfunding for this guy and make him make great money for him for him to contest the election but uh nigerians will not crowdfund for a political party they won't do that so i am a realist and a pragmatic why there is we don't ideas are good and the rest but not like maybe nigerians will not even toy with the idea of crowdfunding for a political party unless they are the loyalists of those parts in those days in the 1960s you wear those parties you're called as action group at the register they had membership cards when you pay your monthly your monthly dues you pay your dues to but the big but the big political parties also have membership cards they do have membership cards but i do not what i do not know is if they pay monthly dues but to be a member of the apc or the pdp of course you do have a membership card but then the financial the financial implications is what i do not know you know what i'm talking about is those days party with bottom bottom uh candidates were funded through dues that they paid members paid dues but not members don't pay dues so how do a political party fund its candidates so it goes back to what we are saying that the funding political fund funding uh party funding in nigeria is it's not correct because it's individuals that want to contest elections or whatever that fund the party and he hope where we'll press the pipe and dictate the tune you don't expect somebody to invest in it but they call it investment we invest your hard-earned money you spend money on the party and then when it comes to choosing candidates you so let's make it a galiteria let's make it meritocracy and all that it doesn't work together therefore we need to address party funding that is the basics if you don't go back to that business to see how party funding issues are addressed again everything cannot we've already seen what i'm talking about with the near-academic aside i'd like to talk about that quickly before we go party funding i remember in 2019 the last election that we had sarah um even before 2019 had been asking police the major political parties in nigeria including the ones that are not so major i'm talking about the likes of apka um to make public their party finances to let nigerians know if they are doing what they're doing within the confines of the law and what the law prescribes especially the electoral act on how much money's and the cap uh to which political parties are not supposed to go above as we speak serap is still dragging political parties to make their finances public which has not been done so i mean when are we ever going to have that conversation we just keep paying lip service to these things but in in its reality we never really go down to the nitty gritties to deal with the issues the teething problems within parties especially the issues of financing and nobody is even inek not even inek is is really monitoring that to see that they follow up uh and then i i guess that i can hear inek saying that well they're not the judiciary uh and they cannot be doing the work of law enforcement well you are just saying it's all it's a matter of the reform then if we don't really look at party funding and make it in fact we should make it we should legislate on it we should make it law we should put a cap and then we should follow it up it is already a law mr misty it is a law it is a law and again i want to ask who are the people who are going to legislate these are politicians why would i want to cut off my nose to spite my face can i ask you what the citizens are doing well that's the that's that's the that's the trillion dollar question isn't it the nigerian citizen is docile the nigerian citizen is absolutely docile in any society all over the world where you have a docile citizen the politicians should behave the way they want to behave where you talk about politics in europe and america because the citizens hold their leaders accountable here we have we have docile citizens we want the angels to form from heaven to to to do our own duties as citizens it's not going to work so rather than tackle the politicians we line up and say oh our citizens have not paid excuses we have a gradual party to do oh we have also two bills to pay we have this to do that is what we present to politicians nothing concrete so where do we go from here because nabah has also said that really sincerely he does not know what tomorrow holds or the day after and that means that the future is uncertain in terms of our our political process and if we really are going to be progressing or retrogressing so um what should we really be looking forward to as nigerians i didn't get your question yeah i'm saying that what does the future hold where do we go from here because the former speaker has said he himself in reality does not know what the future holds and he cannot easily predict because of what is happening right now what the future holds is that uh the young people if you think you have what it takes right now voter registration is going on most of our youths are not interested uh who are those that come out to vote and who are those that don't come out to vote so if our young people are the majority of nigerians who in quotes are conscious of uh we're conscious people and there are not people of conscious are not coming to participate then we don't expect a better result but as i've seen the political landscape in nigeria it's still very it's still not very well structured it's still bleak because we don't have for example party funding and financing is something we have not addressed and we are going to an election therefore i mean thought force or thought force or whatever you call it will not change anything all right but we start on or do we start addressing the fundamentals every other thing we become cosmetic effects well ambrose bouquet is a public affairs analyst and he's been speaking to us thank you so much for your thoughts ambrose thank you for having me all right well we'll take a short break and when we come back i will give you my take it's time for my take now it's let's go straight to the point every single conversation we've had in the past few weeks is about what the future holds for nigeria where we really want to go to it goes beyond us just complaining and you know nagging about the things that our government are doing right or what they're not even doing but then when it comes down to us taking steps to see if we can address those issues we never do anything and my last guest just said that now parties are rather there's a voter registration that is going on and he can he can barely see the number of young people who are interested in this registration process so in other words how do we want to have a change in nigeria if we are not willing to be part of that change we want to have good leaders who's going to vote those good leaders into office if you do not take a first step by getting a voter's card secondly we're out here you know saying oh well we have too many problems as nigerians so let's watch reality shows and forget about our problems does it make the problem go away no the problems are still staring you in the face it will stare you in the face the next morning it will stare you in the face when you get out of your house you open that door and you want to buy whatever you remember because your reality is still there the reality show you're watching is not going to erase that nigerians need to start concerning themselves with nigerian problems we're praying for Haiti let's pray for afghanistan who's praying for nigeria who's getting the nigerian leaders to do the bidding of the nigerian people no every single person is out there praying for every other country instead of nigeria let's face our nigerian problem and deal decisively with it i am mary anacorn thanking you for watching to have a good evening