 The presidential candidate of the African Action Congress, Omayel Eishor, has said that was the escalating insecurity in Nigeria, may not have about 25% of its land mass hold free and fair elections in 2023. Now, the presidential candidate of the African Action Congress said that the deployment of the bimodal voter accreditation system beavers in the 2023 general elections will address Nigeria's perennial problem of election rigging. He said the current insecurity in the country poses a great threat for free and fair elections next year as well as all the regions in the country have peculiar security challenges adding that he has not fallen out of favour with youths and young Nigerians that they still see him as a better alternative to other contenders. Joining us live to discuss this is Omayel Eishor the presidential candidate of the African Action Congress AAC. So good to have you join us. Happy New Year. Thank you very much. I'm just not in happy and new in the year. Well, at least you saw a new year. That's the important thing. Let's start with what you just said. Saying that democracy is not... Let me start by looking at the other issues of beavers because many people have been cautioned to say positive things about the beavers. INEC thinks that the beavers is going to be a game changer. A lot of other people actually think that, but you don't seem to agree with that. It is because I have a very good knowledge of computers and I understand them to the point that a beavers is not going to change the game in an election in which we don't have electronic voting. Beaver, as they call it, is just your cell phone in double modes. And it switches offline and online. According to what is said, I've never touched one before. I don't know how effective they are online, but I know that they have preloaded voter information for every voter that might have registered or received their... ...voter's cards. The theme of the photo has a permanent voter's card. But that's the end of it. The aspects of vote-buying is not captured by beavers. And the limitation of beavers or the weaknesses of beavers was shown in an election judgment. It showed that both political parties, the APC and the PDP, were able to obtain different results from the same beavers. How did that happen? It shows that this is a machine that can be programmed to achieve whatever results you want. But Inaq had come out to explain why that happened. What did he say? Well, Inaq said that one party came before the information was fed out of the beavers and the other came when it had already been fed out of the beavers. That's not true. So information about voter's card cannot change whether the beavers is sleeping or is awake. The movement election is over. Whatever is produced out of beavers should not change forever. So it's a functional program. That's what I said. Inaq has recently been complaining about the fact that there might be a hack, that people have been attacking... Why did you not present any information that this was hacked? But if beavers can be hacked, then forget about beavers. Forget about them. And I'm sure what they're saying is, look, whenever you get a result that is not what you expect. We use hacking as an excuse. So that's the reason why I'm saying... Look, every time there's an election... Why do you think Inaq is making that excuse? Because it sounds like that's what you're saying, that Inaq is making an excuse that in case you don't get a good result, it might be the hackers. Why would you think that's what they're aiming at? Because they're programming you to understand that this may not come out the way you expect. The reason I wanted to take you back a little bit was the card readers. When card readers were brought into Nigeria, everybody said it's a game changer. You know, when this came to the incident forms, the card readers never really worked up to maybe 15% of the country at any time. Even in 2015, the card readers couldn't read the voters card of the president at that time. Good luck, Jonathan. When I was presented, because there's a lot of PR behind all these efforts, what would have solved Nigeria's problem? It's electronic voting. Which will eliminate polling units. It will eliminate, you know, the whole processing I have to take because after you have left the polling unit, it will eliminate vote-buying. If you're going to buy votes, you have to reach people, individual in their homes, and that will take a lot of energy and time and money. It also helps people to not have to travel to the polling units to vote. It's just like saying to you that you have money in the bank. You can transfer it anywhere. And if you can trust a device to transfer money for you, you should be able to trust it to vote for you once in every four years. But then the Constitution is where that empowerment will come from. And I want to ask you, you have been pushing for a lot of things. How come you were not one of those who were in the forefront of pushing for electronic voting? I mean we had a whole row over what should be and should not be an electoral act. No, I've been pushing for evolutionary changes to Nigeria's life. And this involves electronic revolution too, that we can be stuck in the past. And I've been pushing for constitutional changes. I've been pushing for a complete new constitution for Nigeria. So if I'm pushing for constitutional changes and seeing people should come there and determine how they want to vote as well. These are issues that were covered in a constitutional conference that determines the future of Nigeria. Because everything under the sun will discuss from voting to religious rights, sexuality, everything. When it comes to some of those things, but I want to dial back again on this issue of electronic voting. Because you see, a lot of people pushed, like I said, there was a row about what should be and what shouldn't be and Mr. President signing off or not signing off. Why do you think that this wasn't a priority again? And there's also the issue of diaspora voting, which of course if we do have... It's exactly what I'm saying. I've been talking about diaspora voting since 2018 when I traveled around the world, talking to Nigerians in places as far as long as Australia. I traveled in four cities in Australia. I didn't know that Australia was that big, you know, because where the western part of Australia, you know, we went to the eastern, we came back to the west, it was amazing. So I talked to Nigerians, I went to Canada, I went to South Africa and everything I was saying was like, you know, and that is the basis for my position on electronic voting because it affects diaspora voting too. So what the diaspora has to do is to get a code and, you know, ask them, the code, the electronic thing will not change your location so that we know where you are voting from, number one. And I knew we can say that, well, they can override that with this or that too, but that's the way we can also detect that. And then you can vote as a diaspora. You can show that you are Nigerian. So in your own case, maybe you asked for your passport number, you register, if we can find it in the system, it will give you the go ahead to vote, you just need to check, you have a checklist. And when you reach that position, it will give you the ballot paper, electronically, you know, a digital ballot paper, and you check who you want to vote for. If you vote for more than one person, he warns you, you know, you do it the third time, it locks you out of the machine, you have to get them out, that means you disqualify yourself. And these things are simple. Yes, I like it when politicians say, oh, it's very simple. I'm not a politician, I'm a political activist. Well, you're running for a political office, so I will lump you with them. But here we are unable to transfer our monies. We can't even get access to mobile applications that open into your bank platforms for you to access your monies. Our internet services, we hear they're 5G, but then they give us 3G speed. And several other issues that we have yet to be able to deal with, and we're talking e-voting. Okay. I mean, if we're unable to deal with these issues, and I'm not saying that we shouldn't. No, I want to address them. I want to address them. I'm not saying e-voting we care at all, but it's just, you know, when you vote with your device, there are digital footprints that are easy to track, and it's different from someone voting 500 times in a polling unit in the Niger Delta creeks. You get my point. Because today, if you go to Niger Delta, which is where I come from, anything beyond the land parts, anything happening in the creeks, there is no polling unit officer that can control it. The moment the police get on a boat, one policeman, they'll just tell the policeman to once sit somewhere. It's when they're done with the voting, they'll carry everything and give and send it to you. But the electronic voting will solve that. But to make it clear to you, there are over 124 million people in Nigeria that own bank accounts, and almost a hundred and something million of them carry out electronic activities. There are over 150, maybe 50 million smartphones in Nigeria. 150 million. How many people are registered to vote? 93 million. That means the number of voters are less than the number of people who have access to smartphones because these are digital devices that needs to be smart. So the SQC is no longer there. Yes, you have fringe persons, older people who might need help. So you can create polling units for them, but you can't attempt to vote in advance. You do early voting. They do it already in America. America doesn't vote on voting day anymore. You can vote before, but you can't vote after the voting day. All their military people, people outside the country, they vote. They send in what they call million ballots. You have million ballots in the U.S. now, and you also have, you know, ballots that are sent from outside the U.S. They're all million ballots. And they're counted in advance, but they don't announce the results because their processes are transparent and honest. So in this one's front part of the election, but when it's did they, people come out and vote. And I'm not saying that, you know, everything that is done in America is not done in America. It should be done here. But if you can drive American cars, you should be able to operate American voting machines. But let's talk about Nigeria and Nigeria's problems. Let's start with the very cliche things that we ask politicians or anybody who's running for office. I mean, as we speak right now, it's a potpour of issues that Nigeria is facing on every side, whether it be in the education sector, or the INEC, I'm sorry, as we're still at an impasse with the presidency and of course the Ministry of... Education. And education. We're also having a brain-drain situation within our healthcare system. I mean, the emergency services are flawed as we speak. And then let's talk about the economy. Nigeria is facing corruption issues every day. And then of course the issue of security. So anybody who wants to run for president of this country, I always wonder why and what the driving force is, and where do you even start to deal with these issues? You start to deal with the issues as you prepare to handle them. That's why you see most of these candidates would never come on your TV show because they cannot even withstand the rigors of a dissent or even a polite interaction on TV. They also don't go for debates. What they like to do is what they call rallies. These are echo chambers. You park the stadium full with people who haven't been paid 5,000 Naira. Now it's less because there's no cash. And then you entertain them, titillate them and tickle their fancy. And then the candidate comes around for five minutes. He dances around and then he says a few things. Nothing. Even the media can get any sound bites from campaign grounds or campaign rallies. This is not how to engage. So I understand the issues. You are talking about, as of today, we have a full-blown energy crisis. The electricity sector has gone. You can't find petrol to operate anything with. And to compound that, you have a self-inflicted, unprovoked currency crisis. And Nigeria has practically collapsed because it has failed the citizens. Nigeria is officially, at this point, a failed state unable to cope with the basic needs or responsibilities of the states. You have money. This is the first time that I know in history that you have to use your own money to buy money to get anything money can buy. But you don't see... So it's not only security that has a problem. Every sector has broken down. We have a food crisis as well. You have an energy crisis. You have a currency crisis. You have an educational crisis. You have brain drain, as you call it. Over 8,000 doctors have left. Several nurses... 4,000 more getting ready. Yes. More, you know, architects... Two weeks ago, they were asking for teachers. Teachers that were reserving for heaven, for their rewards. They are now about to get their reward on earth. So, tell me what's left. So, it's to understand that the solution must start now. And it must start with someone who understands the problems, not somebody who created the problems. Because that's what Nigeria has to understand, that there are two categories of contestants in this election cycle. It doesn't matter how you say it. The majority of people who the media refers to as the frontline candidate, are the ones who created the problems. How do you mean? They have been the ones who have been in power. That's one of them who has been in power since 1999. He was the minister of defense. He was a member of House of Red. He was governor for two years. He was a senator at the point in his life. He was 8 years in governor of Lagos. He was 8 years vice president of Nigeria. He's been in customs. He has been 8 years governor of Anambra State. These are the guys who created the problems. How did they create the problem? Because you see... They created the problem of... If anybody wants to have an election, your guys, people like you, they wax very lyrical. You tell us... No, that would be demeaning to say that we wax lyrical. I don't wax, I'm not a poet. A lot of people come up with very, very, very germane ideas that you can do. Because we know it. But then whoever gets the most votes is seated there. And then the problems that we were promised will get solved and not be solved. That's exactly the point. So I don't belong to the category of people who wax lyrical. What am I waxing lyrical about? The last time I was on this show with you, what was I talking about? I was talking about the revolution. I got arrested. You were probably the last person to interview me before I got arrested in 2019. So how do I wax like? Wouldn't I tell you that we are applying the revolution. We said, didn't we do it? We tried to, and I ended up in detention. So I mean, do it. I'm not a talker. But again, now... So I'm not waxing lyrical. Maybe I can just do that now. Now, Nigerians are looking deeper. They're asking more questions, which I think is a good thing. And for somebody like you, okay, well, yes, Sahara reports this. You journalists, revolution activists. But why should we entrust the whole country into your hands? Because when the country needed people to take risk, big risk, it was entrusted into our hands. Do you know what our risk was? Military rule. It's bigger than what we have now. At that time, I was 22 years old when I was fighting to save this country. Nobody said I was too young. But you know why should we entrust the 22-year-old guy to be fighting on the streets for democracy? Nobody said that. Majority of the people who you now said have experience. You know, people who are experienced in living in treasuries. When the solution was asked for, they didn't partake. Until today, they are not partake. They only partake in the loot. When they win, then they call themselves. And there are no differences. Because in every government, you'll be surprised how many people are working for a government. Sometimes some of the opposition people you are seeing now, they were created by the current government to be in the opposition. Even if you look at the APC now, their candidate is waxing like an activist in all the radiograms. He's suddenly opposed to the economic policies that brought Naira from 200 Naira to 800. He just woke up and discovered that Naira's value is like depreciated heavily. But that's the tactic. It's the strategy they use in confusing the country. I'm not confused. I know what they're about. I'm sure you saw Elbify's interview talking about accusing some elements, and we do not know who those elements are, in Asorok that he reportedly said are walking against the APC's presidential candidate. What do you think about that situation? And of course, the wife of the president retweeted his post. You see, they know themselves, and he's right. You know, I was the first to mention it on RICV a week before he said, well, that's not my business. I hope they actually, you know, tell themselves apart so that this country can have a new lease of life. But it's also part of their strategy. They know how to distract Nigerians, so you're there like, unable to get snared out of the ATM. You have no petrol. And nobody's talking about it. They're talking about, oh my God, there's a cabal out there who doesn't want to serve that candidate. And everybody's like, why? You know, why does this happen? You're losing time. You're losing integrity. You're losing life. You're losing value. They know it. They know that the country is in turmoil. There's a currency crisis in place. Which they inflicted. When they started their useless currency redesign, I came out and said, they are not redesigning the Naira. They merely took it to Snapchat, filtered it and poured dye on 1009. All the currencies were just changing of dye, not design. And now you can't even find the money because they didn't have the capacity in the first place to print enough of those notes to deal with the demand for it. The supply side of it is a problem. But what did they tell people? And some people still believe today, stupidly, that this was to assure that, you know, the rich people have, the big politicians don't have money to buy votes. Like, I said it and I think Kwakwa saw it repeated a few days ago, China's TV. I granted an interview, put the color to China's TV that I'll play on Monday. And I said, it's like, most of the candidates here claim they have no money. They own banks. And it's been well-meaning that the best way to rob a bank is to own one. So if you own a bank, you know, the one in Lagos has at least probably three banks. He has major shares in. Peter Abusey, owner of Fidelity Bank. You know, Artiku has. Yes, it's the chairman of Fidelity Bank. I'm not making no. Yes. So if there's new currency, where do you think the bank manager has to take the money to first? It's to their chairman and shareholders. Before it gets to the poor people, I've never seen a government queue up at 8 a.m. Not even a councilor because when you are rich, you are connected and powerful in Nigeria, the bank manager has to work from your home. Interesting. Yes. Let's talk about this same situation. You were quoted to say that you're calling for a protest against the Bahá'í government for the scarcity of fuel and the Naira. And we've seen a couple of people protesting already. We saw something in Benin. We saw something in Bahá'í. In the war, yes. And today was a bad day. Yes. Do you not think that you're heating up the polity? No, they are the ones burning down the country with their policy. They ask for it. If you know that you're going into election and you're changing currency, call us and you don't have enough and you give a deadline. You are the one calling for trouble. I'm not the one who went and said people should not be able to withdraw more than 30,000 Naira. You know, you put pressure on the electronic side of things. Almost all the apps have collapsed. You asked that before. The apps are not working for two reasons. One, apps cannot transfer what you don't have. So it's because money in circulation doesn't have anything to do with paper money. Both electronically, you can only circulate what you have. And they sell an amount of money that you have in circulation at this point. So you don't have the money. Besides that, most of the banks have lost some of their best hands, you know, computer engineers who run their back and sue brain drain. So they are just passion together their apps because the maintenance side of things, people who understand how these apps were built, how they have to be maintained and fixed when they have bugs. Most of them have left to Canada, U.S. and the United Kingdom and the Europe. So they don't have the capacity but most probably there's no money to actually transfer. How long do you see this lingering for? Again, don't forget, 23 days I guess away from the election. What that makes you think is... How long can Nigerians continue to hold on? Yes, that's a good question. I think you're starting to see resistance and I think this is how it starts. Resistance will grow and one day everybody will join in. My own conspiracy theories that maybe this is their own way of sabotaging the elections. So the elections don't hold. So the elections would not hold? Why? If you're putting booby traps like this on the part of elections, a number of things are likely to happen. One, even Aineke is saying that they are not sure based on the situation with full scarcity and now lack of money that elections might not be holding. The other aspect of it is this is a demobilization strategy to make sure that voters... If I have to travel to those states and I don't have $30,000 now and it's 24 days away, how do I get there? How do I get fuel to go to where if I'm still in Lagos and there's no helping sites? There's no solution inside to show that this will happen in a few days. So the currency crisis goes on, first-class it continues. How do you get to location? What are the responsibilities that you're supposed to be? And if there are flashes of resistance, maybe next, they are burning down Aineke offices, we don't want to... You know, I don't think it can happen to a volatile situation and I think my views are maybe they actually did put this together because there will be people who are talking about the interim government, not too long ago. Maybe we're reminding you that they are serious. In the past week we've had two issues or situations where one was, according to the police, a drone that dropped a bomb I think in Natoa and the second was an unidentified aircraft according to security agencies that shot at vigilantes in Niger state and I asked the simple question why are we not talking about this why are we not escalating it because our airspace is supposed to be protected even as we are touting ourselves as a country that's fighting in security and terrorism why do you do you believe that there is a conspiracy of silence as to what's happening in terms of security across the country oh yeah you know there is nowhere that you have in scale of this scale anywhere in the world and it's simple that there is no official collaboration the reason is scary has persisted this way it has is because people are benefiting from it you know seriously do you think these people are you know there are people higher up there you know army generals yeah the army generals are you know senior security officials who benefit you don't need to go far when uh genotown left in 2015 and boharic even people you know in those days that boharic was acting like he's fighting corruption and he set up a high-powered panel to investigate all the military leaders what did they find they found money in soki ways they found in what's those escalator water tanks you know everywhere they found money everywhere so it's the same they it's just the personnel have changed but the characteristics of these high-powered people have not changed when you hear about oil theft do you think people are carrying crude in garlands you know we see all those badges that takes crude there was one that even escaped from Nigeria and they you know said they caught it in equatoria again but what I know about these badges is that they cannot move as fast as uh navy boats so how come how is it that the navy can't catch up with and if we can't catch up with the navy but what happened to naval helicopters that can just make sure that they're stopped at all costs but what it's telling you is that the people who are doing those high profile high level high-scale oil theft are in the nmpc and probably the presidency because there's a lot of money to be made from some of them are state governors interestingly mr president is the main shop petroleum and there's been a lot of um scandal surrounding the oil and gas sector yeah the nmpc has been re christened again and given added limited to it and before the year ended he had not at any point been able to um put any monies in the nation's coffins um and yet mr president hasn't really said anything about it so what he must understand about this current president is that he's totally not in charge of anything excuse me i'm serious he's not in charge of the country the country is being run by we have to be serious now well i'm serious yeah you're serious but i'm a little bit more serious than you know typically we should be and it is our seriousness i will take us to the truth there's just rogue units you know what we call cabals in the presence that are running the country you know one is run by his uncle his wife is controlling one the attorney general is in one at the point where they wanted to edge out the attorney general the attorney general and got married to the president's daughter so that he could regain his past you know governors in this country is a joke and we must accept that so they just use the president as a you know you know what they call marionettes you know like somebody hides in the hand and they use number of ropes and fingers to come to that's what's the highest in Nigeria today and all of us know this far and that's what's that our president is a puppet on street absolutely um that's what every fire is saying you know that's what the air fire was saying when he said some people in the presidency are against the party and the the presidency came out and said no we don't know those people because just like the former secretary of a of the federal government was was saying when he was fired and he confronted him uh that's a bad picture laura confronted the media conference didn't even fire they said by who it's a presidency the wish presidency so that sums up the dysfunctionality of ohari's presidency now the avid nigerian of course as we speak now is um in a state of confusion because it's either they're trying to get fuel they're trying to get naira or their pvcs um what's what's the message for the persons who are watching the avid nigerian who's going through it because you see that's the new slang that every nigerian say i'm going through a lot yeah i you know nigerians are going through some of their worst times in history and it's going to get worse if they you know if they keep voting for the wrong people or they allow wrong people to take over the electoral process i use an analogy a lot which is a proverb about the axe and the forest and trees that there was a time trees in the forest uh were looking for a leader and they said they couldn't trust themselves you know it's just like young people say yeah i can't trust this one i can't trust this okay let's go and get somebody who's not part of the forest and they went and brought the axe and everybody's like but this the axe it's going to hurt us you know and the oldest tree in the in the forest said no can't you see the handle it's made of wood and they made the axe coming to the forest and since they did every tree in the forest has been going down yeah well i'm really sure it is the uh presidential candidate of the african action congress always a pleasure to have you in the studio thank you so much for having me and i hope i don't get arrested take a quick break thank you for staying with us and when we return we'll be discussing Governor Samuel Othom's latest press release over threat to his life stay with us