 You're welcome back. We're glad to know you're still there. It's the run-up, and we're talking 2023 election. The unit thing about this next month's general election is that it would revolve around the Electoral Act of 2022, which paves way for technology to be deployed in the course of the exercise. For instance, it imparts the INEC to transmit election results electronically from the polling unit to a central portal in the commission's headquarters. In 2019, there was much talk about the technology, but INEC said they had not deployed the technology yet, even when a particular political party insisted there were figures on a supposed server which favored them anyway. As a campaign for the election has kicked off, the commission has restated its preparedness to deploy every available resource and method to ensure a free, fair and acceptable election this year. But uncertainties still loom as INEC has warned that next month's general election faces serious threat of cancellation if insecurity is not properly tackled. Remember, it's just like a deja vu. The previous administration of Goodluck, Jonathan, had to postpone the election for about six weeks just to make sure that the insecurity problem in the country was tackled before the election. But today we are glad to be joined to discuss this about the preparedness of INEC for the 2023 election. That is Mrs. Adenike Tadesche, HOD voter education and publicity INEC Legos. Welcome to the program, Mrs. Tadesche. Thank you very much for having me on the program. We also have the spokesperson of INEC, Mr. Festus Okoe, who has joined us here today. Welcome to the program, Mr. Okoe. Thank you so much. I know the same ladies first, but I'll start with you this morning. Let's look at the readiness of INEC. Just give us a summary before we go to specifics of what INEC has done to make sure 2023 election is smooth. As you are aware, on the 26th of February 2022, this commission released the type table and schedule of activities for the conduct of the 2023 election. And out of 14 activities we listed, out of the 14 activities we considered as fundamental and critical to the electoral process, we have already implemented 11 of those activities. And we are proceeding at peace with our preparations. We have prepared and we have prepared well. We have the full complement of the beavers that will be used for voter accreditation and authentication. And we also have the full complement of the beavers we will use as backup or as redundancies. We have also started the training of our registration area technical support staff that will in turn train all the ad hoc staff that will operate these beavers on election day. We have also deployed over 60% of the nonsense materials required for the conduct of this election to various locations. So in terms of our own preparations, we are delegating ready. We have revised our MOU with the national union of road transport workers with the national association of road transport owners as well as the marine unions. And we are also going to sign individual contracts with the various transport providers of the various drivers. So we are getting ready. We are not going to be found once in terms of our own preparations, in terms of our own processes and also in terms of our own procedures. We are in a slightly more comfortable position now than we were during the 2019 general election. So we don't have any fears whatsoever relating to the organization and conduct of elections. Okay, before I go to Mrs. Tadeche, I'd like to also find out you talked about beavers and you just received a consignment, the final consignment of beavers. So between now, between the time you received the beavers and that time, configuration and every other thing that needs to be done on the machines need to be done. How far with that, not only the training, but how far with the configuration and everything you need to do on the machines? We are not configuring the beavers now because the configuration of the beavers will take place close to the election period. What we are doing as a president is testing the machines to be sure that the machines are fit for purpose and also to be sure that none of those machines has a factory issue or a factory challenge. If they have an issue that we can resolve which our in-house engineers can resolve, we go ahead and resolve them. If they have factory challenges, we return them to the suppliers or to the manufacturers and they replace them. So that's exactly what we are doing presently. The issue of configuration will come later. Let me point out that close to the election, we are also going to do a test run or a mock trial of the beavers in at least all the 100 nice military districts of this country to let people have a feel of what the beavers look like and to have a feel of the functionality of the beavers before the conduct of the election. So we are testing the beavers to be sure that all the walls that we have are fit for purpose, especially the walls that we serve, the workers 76,846 pulley units and the 809 registration areas in the country. So that's exactly what we are doing presently. Okay, we have no fear on that if so. Mrs. Tadisha, let me come to you. When we talk about the 2023 election, one of the most exciting things about it is the fact that a lot of people have generated interest to be a part of this process and that interest will just be dead if the PVCs cannot be collected and the actual voting done when the day comes. In Lagos, a lot of people have said that they experience a lot of difficulty in collecting the PVCs. Let us know what the challenges are and your level of success of distributing these PVCs in Lagos. Thank you very much. I want to say that the collection of PVCs in Lagos now that we have gone to the registration areas, we have 245 registration areas in Lagos state. I want to put on record that it has been seamless compared to when we were at the local government level. When we were at the local government level, the record we have on a daily basis, cut across the 20 local government offices, we were recording like 14,000 plus in a day. But now that we have devolved to the R-ray level, the 245 R-rays we have in Lagos state, I want to put on record that on a daily basis, we are recording over 40,000 PVCs being collected cut across all the local government. When we talk of the R-rays now. I want to tell our people that once we have devolved to the address test now, these two will be our weakness. That's the collection has been seamless. You can see that we have said 40,000 per day. Let me tell us this. We have two sets of PVCs that we are giving out. We have all drones for those who have registered 2011, 2012, 2018, 2019 generation election we had. And the second set of PVCs for those who could have registered during the continuous voter registration exercise in 2011 to 2022 July when we rounded it up. So now the PVCs in Lagos state that we collected, we have to tell people of about 7 million registrants in Lagos state. Now for the PVCs, the old PVCs we collected from the National Equators of the Commission were like 6,570,291. Now the old PVCs, the one I just gave to the people now that have been collected as of 15 January 2023, 5,685,196, nearly we see have 885,095. Now the new PVCs, as we speak now, if we now put the old PVCs and the new PVCs together, the total overall of the PVCs we collected from the National Equators of the Commission, we have 7,510,491. And as of 15 January 2023, we've been able to give out 6,299,036. So as we speak now, the old collected PVCs within our course study we have as of 15th, we have 1,211,455. And you know it's going to keep decreasing on daily basis, but this large chunk of PVCs we have are born out of the old PVCs. Because the new PVCs, you can see that people are really coming now. And for those people that engage in multiple registrations and their name has been removed from the new registration, they had no choice than to go back and collect their old PVCs. And this is what we are doing now. And you know at the RA level, we are going to be there till 22nd now that we have extension. We'll be there till 22nd January 2023 so we will now revert to the local government, the 20 local government offices we have in Lagos. That will be from 23rd to 29th when we will land up. So I want to say that this exercise has been seamless. The only thing is to tell our people to be patient with our staff. Everybody will ensure that everybody will get their car. The only problem we are having now, and it's not even a problem because it has been resolved so to say, and those that are having omission, their cars are being omitted for one reason or the other. And we have gotten all the data and we have sent to the National Equators of the Commission we even received a message now yesterday that we should collect all those having omission. And between today and tomorrow that the cars will be sent to the State Office. So we want to tell our people, they should have their assurance that I, Nick, will never disembark or disembark anybody from voting. And the only tool they have to vote is the permanent voter card and we ask them to know that it is very, very paramount and very, very important. And we are working in a serious way to ensure that all eligible registrants are ready to be received. Okay, Mrs. Stardeshe, we understand that it has improved tremendously from the time that it was at the local government headquarters to now that have come to the words and polling units. But the problem is that we still find people who have complained, a lot of them because Plus TV went out to town to fill the polls of the people. A lot of people complain that they go to a particular place that they were supposed to get the card. They are sent to somewhere else. They go to that particular place that they have been sent to and they are sent to yet another place. So what are your challenges because I'm not saying that you're not doing your job but what are the challenges so that people get to know as well because when you're calling for patients from the citizenry, they need to know what challenges you're facing. So why is it that some people cannot find their names where they are supposed to find their names? What are some of these things that we need to know? Yes, if we have people registrants of such because we are trying to ensure that because the French mark for registrant in the polling unit is 750. That is our threshold. So we are trying to really quit people. So if they get to any polling units with their sleep and they cannot get their card they will be directed to their appropriate place. For we are not even having much challenges of such because the challenges we are facing is this omission thing that I just spoke about not quite long, omission. But you are still telling our people because they keep saying that these omissions are PBCs we are not so sure they will print. So they are the ones raising this eyebrow and we have told them that because when they get to any polling units and they cannot get their cards we ensure that we get their data and we escalate to the appropriate causes and a budget. National approaches where their cards are being arched. And we are giving them their assurance because once we have your data we have your addresses we have your phone numbers I just told you that we got that directly from the National Archives now that the cards we will send to the states between today and tomorrow. And once we have that we ensure that we get across to all the eligible registrants to come and collect their cards. I don't see that as anything deep because the officials that are working now we have a lot of them the official time for the collection of the PBC is between the house of 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. but in the legal state we got the honorable record in its own magnanimity extended the time to like 40 on daily basis. So we are giving them that opportunity to come in and out. So they should not exercise any fear. Thank you. Well, let me go back to Mr. Okoe. One thing I have noticed is that sometimes we find definitions in other climes different from definitions that we find in Nigeria. I hope that is not the same way with INEC. We need to know the definition because of vote buying because the citizens would want to know when you are giving warning that the person who is buying the vote and the person who is selling the votes they are all supposed to be in trouble. Now we need to know what vote buying really is according to the definition of INEC so that when we see something we can say something as well. What really is vote buying? Well, if you go to the electoral act you will not see vote buying in the electoral act. What you are likely going to see will be what we call either bribery or voter inducement. When you induce a voter to exercise his or her franchise in a manner different from the way the voter wants to exercise his or her franchise that is voter inducement. When you give a voter a source or you give a voter money at the level of the fully unit in order for the voter to vote one way or the other that is bribery. That is trying to corrupt the electoral process. But vote buying as a concept is our own definition of our own understanding of this concept of trading. You give me your PVC I give you some money or you vote for me and you show me how you have voted and then I will give you a reward in return. That is exactly what we are talking about. So in the concept in the Nigerian concept of vote buying there is a willing buyer and also a willing seller. So it's a transactional deal a transactional business between two individuals. And so both the person who is buying is guilty of an infraction and the person who is selling is also guilty of an infraction but that is really at the theoretical level. There are different reasons why people want to compromise the sanctity of the ballot. There are different reasons why people want to say their PVCs. This is because there are some people who do not realize the power and the potential of the PVC. They don't realize the sovereign power and the ownership of the electoral process embedded in the PVC. So I believe that with enlightenment and also with robust and comprehensive advocacy we will begin to sensitize our people of selling their PVC or selling their votes for any amount whatsoever because good governance resides in the PVC. The PVC is not equivalent to an ATM card. You can only withdraw money with an ATM card but the PVC can change the government and there is a whole difference between the two. So I think that our people should not on any account whatsoever compromise the sanctity of the PVC or compromise the sovereign rights and ownership of the electoral process embedded in the PVC. Okay. You mentioned the fact that a transaction has to be carried out between the person who is buying and the person who is selling. In some cases the person who is buying will not even tell the person who is in quotes selling that this is what is going on. I'll give you an example. Because they know that maybe on the day of election they cannot exchange money for votes and all that they do what they call empowerment. In some states we have found governors for instance who want to come back or who are trying to go to the senate for instance now doing an empowerment scheme and they say this empowerment scheme is going to last till after the election. Categorically they are telling you it's not going to end and it will continue all year round. It will end in March. And this is what is going on. Some people have called this vote buying but it doesn't necessarily have to have the consent or something like that of the person who is receiving. Because you go to a polling world you select five people and you say because I know the suffering in the land is so much let me bless five families from now till March they will be collecting. So every polling unit will have at least five families which will have at least five people each that will vote in that family. So how do you define this? Can this be also called vote buying or because it's not done on election day or two days before the election or they are not using the words vote for me. You cannot call it vote buying. You know people can be very creative and people can also be very innovative and people can use a bribery, corruption and inducement using different concepts using different cliches and also using different methods and using different methodologies. Unfortunately the electoral management body cannot be everywhere and cannot monitor every program organized by individuals organized by groups and also organized by government. In powerment programs as the concept is part of good governance but when you less the empowerment with the seats or when you lessen the empowerment and mask it with a completely different concept it becomes something else. Our concern and the remit of the commission is that we do not want to see any candidates any politician, any political party at the principles of the polling unit trying to buy or sell PVC. We do not want a situation where people will be asked to show how they have voted or who they have voted for. We are not too much interested in what goes on at the level of governance and also at the approaches governments at the various levels adopt in ameliorating the suffering of our people. There are some people who exploit the poverty of our people there are some people who exploit the vulnerabilities of our people in order to corrupt them and also in order to do things that are on tour and also in order to skew their brains from doing what is right so I believe that we should continue to advocate, enlighten our people and also empower them both economically and politically and through electoral education to understand the variables and also the lines the red lines between a parliament and vote by it and I think that that is what we will have to continue to do it's a long way but I'm sure we are going to get there sooner than later. Okay thank you so well that means a lot more has to be done about education so that the people will know like you said red lines the way they should not cross and the fact that like you mentioned some of these things are part of good governance the people should be able to decipher between what is done because that is what is supposed to be done as good governance and what is done because the votes are needed so that people get to know that you can still collect those things because those are part of good governance and then do what is right for you talking about education let me come to Mrs. Tadashi let's know about in Lagos here how far are you taking this advocacy because even though Lagos has a population we say that is 10% of the population of Nigeria resides in Lagos and if we get it right in Lagos there's a likelihood that we might get it right everywhere else in Nigeria how far are you taking this advocacy to the grass root because it doesn't end in just giving PVCs to people so what are you doing to raise the awareness of people regarding this election 2023 thank you very much concerning the sensitization of our people to know what they are to do before during and even after the election we have held series of stakeholder meetings where we in the stakeholder's meeting we have the traditional rulers at the state level we have the media we have the market women we have all the stakeholders all the stakeholders even the political parties very very important we have meetings with them that is at the state level and even market outreach we are going out we have partnered with some we have a set of people who go to providers, we have them in legal state and they too they have been going from one market to the other we have been following them we have been going on advocacy visits to sensitize our people to tell them what they ought to do and what they ought not to do at the state level and even at the local government level all the local government offices we have in legal state they have been having interviews with all their stakeholders as well we have those we call voter education desk officers in each of the local government we call them fedos their own assignment is to go to one marketplace townhouse to tell our people what our net is doing at the moment and this they have been doing and that is why we are having this large turnout of our people coming out to collect their cash because if you have not been doing advocacy visitations people might not know what we are doing they might not even know we are at a level so we are not resting on ours in the legal state we have been going all around as we speak now nothing picked the date to meet with the council of traditional rulers in the legal state so we are all the traditional rulers we want to tell them all the activities we have in contrast of the 2023 general election we are not resting on ours we have been moving from one area to the other sensitizing our people we have like these fedos have said they are not even resting but let me say something that might be funny to our people concerning this issue of a collection of PVCs when they tell our people come to the arena that we have PVCs you know what most people say bring to our house the PVCs to our house not on our door and they say since you can come out to yourself for registration because we don't give this cast out by proxy so our people will always want and that's what we are doing anyway we keep educating our people we keep sensitizing them we keep telling them so that they know what to do this is your watch binder my boss just talked about we are not going to relate this voter education because most of them they might be ignorant of what they are doing like some people who are telling us maybe they are collecting some set of people are collecting their cast from what we are doing because we are telling them if you collect another PVC it's not going to be useful for you on the election with this use of our Pivas by modern voter accreditation you cannot use another PVC and that's what we are saying if you educate your fingerprints for your officials so collecting their cast you really don't know why they are doing that your voter accreditation number is clear and specific to yourself and you should not divulge it for whatever reason so I don't know why people are so but like my boss has said we keep on educating our people so when they know the importance of the PVC as they are true and as a voice I know they will not want to keep it for whatever reason okay well Mr. Okoye and Mrs. Tadise we are going to take a short break and when we return most of the things we will be talking about will bother on security security of the technology security of life and property everything security when we talk about the election so that you clarify some gray areas but just stay with us and we will be back in a moment you are welcome back it's still the run up and we are looking at the 2023 election we are being joined by Mrs. Adenike Tadise who is the head of department voter education INEC Lagos and we also have the spokesman of INEC Mr. Festus Okoye we just like to call you the spokesman your titles are long spokesman it is that we enjoy calling you let's begin with you Mrs. Tadise just talked about the fact that some people buy voter cards and they say it's not going to be of any benefit to them walk us through how these things work anyway because some people might still be nursing the idea of buying it except for the fact that some people say there is a catchment area of a particular political party and by the PVC so that the voting strength in that place will not be good enough so just tell us how voter card buying will affect the election whether positively or negatively or whether it will have no effect on the forthcoming election from two perspectives if we have an effect the first perspective is if you deny somebody of his or her permanent voter card what you have done is to take away part of the person's sovereign right to make a determination or how he or she wants to be governed that is one secondly when you buy up a PVC there is a possibility that you are suppressing the vote and as you pointed out you can go and buy up the PVC of some of people in an area he or she believes maybe a go style to his or her political aspiration in which case those people will not have an opportunity of coming to the polling units to come and use their PVC to vote so that is called both suppression or voter suppression you have suppressed their right to come to the polling units to exercise their democratic franchise the second aspect is if you buy the PVC and you want to use it at the level of the polling unit now that is where the problem is the the details of each registered voter in Nigeria now resides in the beavers but section 47 subsection 1 of the letter R2022 still makes it mandatory that any voter who wants to exercise his or her franchise must come to the polling unit with his or her voter card so when you approach a presiding officer with your voter card they will look at the last digits of your voter dedication number or VIN number and use it to call up your details from the beavers they will also certify that you are one of those that have been captured in the voter's register that will be used for the conduct of election and that is where it ends thereafter the voter must be accredited authenticated using the beavers using the fingerprint technology or the facial technology and so when the beavers tries to identify you using your fingerprint and it fails then you will be identified using your facials so if the beavers cannot identify your fingerprints and cannot identify your face there is only one conclusion and that conclusion is that you are engaged in identity theft and you are not who you are purport to be in which case we will not allow you to vote the only way we will allow you to vote is for you to go home and bring your authentic fingerprint and come back to the pooling unit before we are allowing you to vote so buying up the PVC and giving to someone who is not the registered voter or coming to the pooling unit thinking that you can use it to vote twice is next to impossibility and people should predict that idea and stop trying to buy up pvc's because at the end of the day it will be completely useless and they will be looking for where to dump the PVC either in the soccer web or on the highway so it is completely useless ok by way of emphasis because we have been talking beavers all this while just walk us through how beavers is actually a game changer in this election you have touched on it even talking about it today but just specifically tell us why we should really really be excited about this election just because of beavers and any other technology you might have yes the beavers is more or less like an arbitrator is not an arbiter between the Nigerian people and the electoral management body what we have done is to introduce a technology that makes it possible for only registered voters in Nigeria to vote on election day prior to this particular period when we were using the ICDM form when the data of each registered voter resides in the PVC some people will go to the polling unit and then the smart card readers are unable to read their data and they say give me ICDM form to fill and they are giving ICDM form to fill so you find a situation where one individual can vote 10 20 times on the basis of the fact that his or her PVC cannot be read by the smart card reader that arise over because as I pointed out the data of each registered voter now resides inside the beavers and the beavers contains only the data of all the registered voters in a particular polling unit and no more so the beavers must be in a position to authenticate your fingerprint if you authenticate your fingerprint you'll be in a position to vote if it does not authenticate your fingerprint and authenticate your face you'll be in a position to vote if it does not do these two things you will not be allowed to vote so all those who have bottom PVCs thinking that they can use it should just perish the thought and go and dump them in a place where we can see them and make it available to the owners so the beavers is a game changer and the beavers is the real arbitrator in relation to the electoral process and we are really really excited about it and it's going to restore ownership of the electoral process in the hands of the Nigerian people how much of the the people living with disabilities community represented or considered in this election for instance someone wants to vote and the face might be there the hands may not be there but the person wants to vote someone wants to vote and he is blind he is willing the fingerprints are there the face is there but he is blind do you have braille for the blind for instance do you have alternatives for the people who may not have the fingerprints to do this in the forthcoming election do you have robust relationship we have an exciting relationship we have a trust relationship with persons with disability we incorporated them much more concretely much more comprehensively in the electoral process when we were doing all the off-cycle governorship elections and other by elections we make sure that we incorporate them to collect the data segregated data of persons living with disability in all the polling units across the federation we are also cooperating with them at this moment we are going to deploy braille ballot guide we are also going to deploy magnifying glasses we are also going to print posters for various categories of persons with disability and we have also trained our presiding officers on the need on the constitutional and negative need to give persons with disability priority in terms of voting so we have an exciting relationship with persons with disability and we have been working with them and we continue to work with them in this election in the 2020 regional election no individual will be left behind no person with disability will be left behind every Nigerian who is valiantly registered we have an opportunity to see the size increase of our democratic franchise okay before we go to the national we will come back to you Mr. Okoye for the national outlook of security let me go to Mr. Statichet right now Lagos state some people feel that there might be some flash points during the forthcoming general election what are you doing to make sure security in Lagos is top notch before the national body says what we are going to do surely Lagos state must have been putting some things in place because it is a peculiar state what are you doing in terms of security Mr. Statichet Mr. Okoye it seems she is not there why we are waiting for her to she is mooted and that is the problem let me come to you the chairman of INEG said something some concerns that the 2023 general elections may be postponed because of security reasons what really are the specific security challenges that made him to say that because it has put a lot of Nigerians on edge unless we begin to know what specifics he was talking about then we might a lot of people might just stay home and say even INEG chairman said the security situation is too bad so let's know why he said that and what is being done right now to make sure that doesn't come up postponement of the election the commission has clarified that particular issue the commission has made it very clear that the conduct of the 2023 general election is sacrosanct and the commission is proceeding with organizing undertaking and supervising this election if the election is not sacrosanct we couldn't have created or converted the voting points and voting points settlements into full-fledged polling units thereby bringing the total number of polling units in Nigeria to 176,846 moreover we have also displayed the voter's register for claims of objections and presently we have a total registered voter population of 93,469,008 and these people are presently collecting their permanent voter's gas I've also informed you that we have the full complement of the beavers required for the conduct of this election and we are presently engaging various trainings meant to prepare both ad hoc staff and our permanent staff for this election so we are getting ready for this election if you look at section 132 subsection 2 of the constitution you can see that the period for the conduct of elections has been constitutionally circumscribed and the moment you try to get out of this constitutional window it becomes very very problematic so this commission and working very hard to make sure that the 2020 regional election is successful I pointed out that when we started that we are now in a more comfortable position than we were in 2019 and the chairman has made it clear that under his provision, that under his watch elections will no longer be postponed on grants of logistics and logistic challenges moreover we have received assurances from the various security agencies and they continue to assure us and assure the nation that they are doing all within their power to secure the nation to secure the country to make sure that election materials are distributed to make sure that election personnel are feeling comfortable going out to go and work for doing this election and also to make sure that the voters have the confidence and the trust to go out on election day to go and exercise their franchise so we have no doubt whatsoever that we are prepared for this election the nation is prepared for this election the Nigerian people are prepared for this election and almost all the sectors are prepared for this election and we are proceeding at peace with preparations we have executed 11 out of the 14 items we have in our schedule time table and schedule of activities so if there is any sector if there is any commission that is prepared for this election the independent national electoral commission okay the independent national electoral commission can be prepared for the election but the people may not be okay this is why I say this there may be some things that INEC will want the people to do because all the responsibility cannot be on just INEC the citizens have their responsibility as well so what are these responsibilities what are these things that you expect from the citizens of Nigeria to ensure that this election will be free, fair, credible and seen to be so Nigerians must understand that democracy must be natural Nigerians must understand that democracy must be protected Nigerians must also understand that for democracy to endure in this country they must take ownership of this democracy in other words during this election Nigerians must engage in mandate protection election rigors only go to public units and communities that are vulnerable they hardly approach communities where people are conscious where people do not want anything to happen to their public units or their registration areas or their local governments in mandate protection secondly Nigerians must try as much as possible to come out and use that permanent voter's card to exercise their franchise as I said the permanent voter's card is not an alternative ID card the permanent voter's card is not an ATM card the permanent voter's card is for voting and voting alone so collect your permanent voter's card and show up on election day I also want Nigerians to be sure and we want to assure them that this commission will make their votes to count and that only the Nigerian people can put any government in power and only their votes can put any government in power the chairman of the commission has made it clear and has also assisted the commission to put in place processes and procedures that makes it even impossible for a national commissioner to vote in a single polling unit we are building a professional commission we are building an ethical commission and also we are building a commission owned by the Nigerian people and a commission that will have the trust of the Nigerian people and that is where we are so let Nigerians take ownership of this particular process show up on election day engage in mandate protection and defend this democracy that is their responsibility just briefly about mandate protection there was a time that INAG or maybe I heard wrong said that at the polling station when the election is going on nobody is allowed to use cameras or phones to record some things maybe I got the information wrong but if I didn't get it right has that law been lifted can people protect their mandate by amplifying the wrongs that may be done the commission said is that one of the wrongs of democracy one of the beauties of democracy is the secrecy of the vote the commission said no individual is allowed to go into the voting compartment to go and film or photograph how he or she has voted and no individual is also permitted to go and film how somebody has voted within the voting compartment because what we operate is what is called open secret ballot you complete the secret and vote in public because the electoral act says that the ballot box must be kept in the full view of people from beginning to the end of voting so we don't want people to go and show how somebody has printed or how somebody has voted but in terms of staying around in the polling units the commission has nothing against people staying around so long as they don't interfere with the voting process or with the election process they can stay around see how people are voting see how results are being collected see how results are being counted see where results are the votes of the people see how from easy it is being is being filled and also see how the entire electoral process is going on we don't have any challenge with that and we encourage people to stay around and see how the electoral process progresses this is very clear now because it was achieved generally anywhere the election is going on even phones are not allowed but now we know the polling booth of people previously used to go there maybe because of this vote buying and all that to take photographs and videos of how people are voting so that after that the rewards will come so it is good that you have clarified this and you have also said that people can stay around and make sure everything goes well but like you said not to disrupt the process of the election just a final word today even though you have been saying some things like that just give us some more assurances about the election and if we have Mrs. Stadich here maybe she will also talk to the Legosians please Mr. Okoye finally tonight the HOD is muted so she can mute herself so that she can also talk to the people of Legos let me just say this we want to assure the nation and the chairman has given this assurance over and over again that this commission this commission is a public trust we are going to be very transparent and we are going to be very open in terms of our processes and our procedures and we want to assure Nigerians that only the votes of the people only the votes of the Nigerian people will determine the outcome of this election this commission will work and work assiduously for the people of this country and we are going to make sure that their votes count and their votes will continue to count we have our assurance on this this commission will not disappoint the Nigerian people this commission will continue to work for the good of the Nigerian people and nothing will deter us we have the courage, we have the staying power and we also have the planning ability and disposition to do what is right for the people of this country thank you very much Mr. Okoye for all this thank you so much Mrs. Stadich, if you have unmuted yourself can you say something to Legosians very briefly now we are going to tell our Legosians to please avail themselves the opportunity of coming out now that we are still at the early level, the world level because that will make it so easier for them to collect their cash and we know that without the PBC you cannot vote on election day even if you have the PBC you don't even vote on coming out on election day because that is the only tool it is your power, it is your right to vote for leaders of your choice and together we can make a change in Nigeria, thank you very much thank you very much we have been talking with Mr. Festos Okoye the spokesperson of INEC and also with the HOD of voter education INEC Legos Mrs. Deneke Tadache it's been a pleasure having you on the show today and we are getting closer and closer to the election so we will be calling on you when we have questions that we need answers to thank you for coming on the show today thank you so much thank you very much I will take a break now for the news and when we return we wrap up the program stay with us