 Finally, Senate removes direct primaries clause and passes electoral act amendment as the House of Representatives rescins decision on direct primaries. And Speaker of the House of Representatives Femi Bajabiamila calls for a review of educational qualifications for presidential aspirants. This is Plus Politics. I am Meri Annakor. The Nigeria Senate has removed the clause that makes direct primaries mandatory for the election of candidates into political parties from the Electoral Act Amendment Bill. The House also of Representatives has rescinded its decision on the compulsory direct primary clause in the Electoral Act Amendment Bill. The lawmaker has reversed the move during its plenary session today and instead adopted the direct and indirect primaries. It's also expunged the consensus option. While joining us to discuss this is the Director General of Heritage Center, Dr. Katch Anunudhu. Thank you very much, Dr. for joining us. Thank you for having me. Great. It's interesting. I mean, this is the front and center of every conversation right now, the Electoral Act Bill and many have asked that Mr. President be his, his, he should be vetoed one way or the other. But then there are also people on the other side of the divide that are saying, well, do not veto Mr. President. Do what you need to do and pass, send it back to the President to deal with it. But looking at what's happened today on the floor of the National Assembly, both the upper chamber and the lower chamber, what are your thoughts because it looks a bit, you know, discombobulated for want of a better word? And no, I would say this is the beginning of the processes that we get the two items of the National Assembly towards a joint meeting and concordance. There were three items that were affected today in class 84. And that is changing the direct primaries as being the option to now expand the options. The Senate said, allowing the president's new pet project about consensus, whatever it is that makes the Senate agree on consensus that makes the House of Rep kind of drag its feet on it. We will see when they go for consolidation of the two positions. So what we've had now is progress towards getting the president to append his assent to the Electoral Act amendment. So he has said to the Senate, I want consensus. I want a direct primary. And I also want indirect primary. In other words, let the options be to the parties to choose what they want to do. And that's what we've done today. So the House of Rep is simply saying something, which later on on negotiations, if we may get to understand that may be an assistance from his own faction of the APC, that they might want consensus. So we will see how that gets to when the Senate sits in a joint session with the House of Rep towards harmonization. That's where we will see if the president will get what he wants in terms of consensus. But first, the issues have been dealt with. And that's it. The president is saying he does not want that indirect primary to be the only option. That has been said and given to him by the equivalent of clause 84. I'm curious and we're not trying to preempt what the National Assembly's joint meeting would be, but looking at the expunging of the consensus idea, this has brought a lot of people, you know, has thrown up a lot of people within political parties. I was having a conversation yesterday and the person said, well, the APC sometimes mostly leans to consensus candidates. And sometimes, you know, when they pick and choose it, they can also have indirect or direct primaries. But let's look at, you know, the reasons why these things are chosen by political parties. For example, I had a politician here yesterday and he said, most people who choose indirect primaries do that because they have done some groundwork and they've talked to delegates and they're very certain that this base would get them the votes that they need to emerge finally as flag bearers. And then he said, for those who choose indirect primaries, half the time, maybe they're not the anointed one in quotes by the governor or the leader of the party at the point. So they want to make the people choose and that way they're hoping they would be thrown up as the flag bearer of the party. So this is a game of interest as we speak. But where is the democracy in all of this? If this in both ways, people are looking at how they can get votes and not necessarily allowing the process of democracy to take its course. Democracy is in two of them. Democracy doesn't exist in consensus. Because consensus could just be a trick through which some strong people may want to impose a candidate on a caucus. And then when you complain, they say we built a consensus. So that may not be democratic. That's where the problem is. And that I think at the end of the day, the president may simply still sign it, even if it doesn't get his way. But as I said earlier, these are the popular semantics as we progress towards this electoral act. INEC has already said that it will not set any time table until the electoral act is ascended to. That means we have a contribution from all sides of our national life, from those on the streets, from those in the business community, from the political class who are actually playing the tricks. Because I really do not see any reason why people should not be allowed the option of choosing what they want from the local code. It wasn't necessary to put it just direct primary. Now, we should have been here. We should have been here before now. Parties should have had the right to choose what they want. Direct primary is a very expensive process. You might also have a new party. They don't need to do all that. They simply decide with themselves and they go to the field and then do the display. So I don't think we should very quickly start to allow this fight between the governors who want to be careful about who makes the list of those who are going for elections and the aspirants who may think they're very, very popular and so will not want governors to influence anything but want to go directly to the field and try their logs out. You see, this is just a process. The democracy is still, as I can see, evolving. If President Buhari assents to the amendment of the electoral act, that would be a landmark position because what's inside it is bigger than the noise that we're talking about now. The direct capability of INEC where possible to transmit reports electronically is the main elephant inside this electoral act. So all the other noise about direct and indirect those things are irrelevant to the real conduct of elections and the processes that will make the process to be seen to be clean to the public and whoever the observer is. So I think we're making good progress. It is good the way this issue has been attended to today at both the House of Grants and the Senate of the federal public. So let us see how this gets in the next two, three, four days and see when that paper would be in front of the president for his assent. I have no doubt the ruling party have seen that the public and international community plus our deployment partners are not willing to actually watch and accept that the government and its apparatus are not ready for the progress of a democratic process. And I believe a lot hinges on what happens to this bill. So I am still very, very optimistic. Like a lot of Nigerians were optimistic. We pray the president will do everything he promised he would do now that they've given him what he wants. He's saying he wants consensus. The Senate is moving that. But let's see what happens when the Senate and half of us sit together to harmonize everything and then we'll know we'll have the bill. I like your optimism, but then all of this is hinging on if and it's a probability. So going back to what Ineq, Ineq's boss, Makhmudi Akub had said about the rolling out of the plans for the elections come 2023 and the calendar. What if, I mean, the biggest question is what if this lingers because we're working with time here. Ineq also needs to prepare on time so we do not have hiccups as we always do. What if this lingers and there's a drag? Like what happened in 2015 when they said, oh, well, it was too close to time for it to be passed, for it to even be activated for the elections? What if there's that drag? Because can Ineq just put all of its hope on the fact that Mr. President may or may not give his assent to this particular one that they're going to come up with? Well, I can conveniently tell you that a lot of people who work at Ineq can not travel back to their villages and they know very well if they keep quiet and allow politicians to mess the process up that all of us will be entrapped by those who seek to keep democracy and destroy it. So I think it's a very, very encouraging thing that all institutions involved in this process are actually expected that President was time. So it was very welcome when Ineq said they will suspend a fixation of the time table until after we clear the electoral process law, which is the electoral act. I think that's really spoke a lot. And for that to come from Ineq, that tells you that Ineq wants to get it right. They know very well that politicians purposely make laws to undermine the process, to disallow the use of biometrics, the use of technology, to make it easier for Ineq to do his work. So President Buware has done his two terms. I think it should be grateful to the country and prequits out a better electoral process that he met. If that is what he wants to prefit to the country, we will say thank you to him. But if he does not want that to happen, he should understand that that will tell very badly on his legacy and he never moved the neighborhood from where he saw it until where he left. So I think he understands this is a landmark legislation and it does have very strong input on the electoral process going forward. I believe a lot of people have come on to bring pressure, to tell the president, allow the country to move on because a lot hinges on his accent to that law. If he signs it, we can conveniently say that our electoral process has not started moving. It has come into being in line with preference technology because you have biometrics and for us to use biometrics, you need this law. For us to also use the electronic transfer of results, you need this law. So a lot is actually riding on the law. Never mind issues about direct or indirect panel. No matter the process to put parties, bring out the candidate. The most important thing is the voting and in the voting, you have amendment to the electoral act that will allow automatic transfer of electronic results. And also, as they say, the biometric use which we've seen very successful in Anambara. I believe the government will do the right thing by ascending to that bill. I think that INEC is on the right path. I also think that half the rep and the Senate will finally come together and a lot of people go to the president in the next seven days. Talking about the National Assembly here doing the right thing, I'm always, I like to look at things from what if. Now, how much pressure should non-governmental organizations, pressure groups, all those who are interested, those of us who want this bill to scale through? How much pressure needs to be put daily on members of our National Assembly? Don't forget they all have interests whether it cuts across party lines or not. How do we make sure that this does not take long just as I said earlier on? Should we go beyond what we did before when there was a row of sorts that issues of direct or indirect primaries were now the order of the day? How can we make sure that pressure is put up on not just Mr. President, but members of the National Assembly to make the right call on this issue, knowing there's a lot, as you have said, is riding on it? I can tell you from the insight and knowledge I have, Cylinder Barry Bay leader of the opposition has made his work very well. He has gotten all members of even the ruling party to realize that this is in the good of the country. On the long term, the president seemed to be well embarrassed enough to go on brooding the signed this bill. The National Assembly know very well that a lot will be riding on who they are and how they can decision if they signed this bill. So I believe I want to continue to share the optimism of the country that Buhari would do the right thing and assent to this bill. I have no doubt this bill is some way of fun with the assented. Now talking about going forward, when the bill finally does get passed and assented to by Mr. President, looking at the electronic part of the bill, will this electronic transmission of resolve pave way for the conversation of e-voting, diaspora voting? We also see that there are other contents of this particular new bill or things that have been tweaked like the independent candidacy that might be an option for a lot of people. We've seen a young lady who has decided that she wants to run for presidency but then she does not have a platform to run on. Will this also give room for more and more people who probably have good intentions and want to run for public office? I cannot tell you what the bill will give, what the bill will not give until after the amendment is done. What we know today, which I can show you, tell you is there has been a tinkering of clause 84. So clause 84 says allow for various forms of primary. So instead of making it only the direct primary, now we have the indirect primary and the president is also asking and the city seem to be listening to him in regards to he say he wants consensus. Consensus how it could be in regard to their quest to bring outsiders to run on the platform of the ATC. If that passes through, it may then be easy for them to have meetings, leaders will agree and they say they have a consensus, presidential candidate. So it is probably due to the interest of the principal of the House of Respeaker in the presidential election that it may be seen the House of Respeaker forcing this broadening dragging of his feet and giving the president what he wants in regard to the consensus candidate. But then I think lawmakers will be able to sit over it and see if it is allowed under law and somebody might do consensus without going through the spell that process this other primary election process. So we are watching to see what we finally get in the bag when this tinkering in the National Assembly that has started today ends. Until that, I will tell you, let's cross our fingers and be very optimistic for what will come finally in the electoral bag when passes. Before I let you go, I don't think you got my question properly. I talked about other things that were not necessarily an issue when the president returned that bill to the National Assembly. I'm talking about the inclusion of independent candidacy. So you don't necessarily need to be a member of the APC or the PDP to emerge as a candidate to run for an office. I'm also talking about the issue of e-voting. I'm saying if we are able to deal with this issue of e-transmission, does this pave the way for the conversation for e-voting and diaspora voting? This is what I was asking. Well, the issues of e-voting and diaspora voting, I believe are processes that we call when INEC has the capability to do a lot of distance. The fears of e-voting is does INEC have the deployment capability for the machinery that was needed for it? If they do, do they have the logistics to man all the places where these things can be done? Yes, INEC have the money if you give them. They'll be able to purchase e-voting machines available today on earth. And as far as we have a telecom presence in the places where automatic registration of the votes will be required as a last link server. If that becomes necessary and it's available anywhere on earth, Nigeria can deploy it, INEC has said so. So in this bill, when passed and ascended the way it is now, we'll be able to allow INEC to decide some of the things you're saying. The issue of e-voting, INEC will decide when to do it if it has the capability and the logistics. The issue about independent candidacy, if it is in the bill, yes it will be. If it is not in the bill, then we'll have to do more work to impress it on legislators to include it there. That is if it doesn't make the final bill that we expect to be ready in the next one week. So that's why I'm telling you, I don't know what is in or what might go out yet. But we've seen the presence, top demand of open up the process, don't close it to only direct primary. That is what the National Assembly dealt today. And they dealt for the House of Rep and the Senate. And of course we saw the different way and approaches that they came to deal with this issue. That's why I'm telling you, wait till they do harmonization before I can conveniently tell you what and what are inside a harmonized bag. For now, I will simply tell you the process have just started. Okay. Well, Dr. Katchan Nuju is the director general heritage center. It's always a pleasure to have you join us on the show. Thank you so much. I appreciate your thoughts. Thank you for helping me. Great. Well, thank you all for staying with us. We'll take a quick break now. When we return, we look at the educational qualifications review for presidential candidates, Compt 23, our 2023 exactly what change will it make? Stay with us.