 The 2023 elections are around the corner and, of course, campaign season is upon us. The 2019 election was said to have been riddled with the tampering of results, collision by political party agents and security agencies, inefficiencies in operations manifested in discrepancies in records and also in voter register data, poor logistics and supply of material resulting in delays and some localised incidents of voter intimidation, ballot box, snatching and destruction. Now, with another election approaching and also with the Electoral Act's amendment bill currently hanging in Limbo, we ask, what is the way forward in making sure the challenges faced during the previous elections are not repeated in the fast coming 2023 elections? Well, joining us to discuss this is the National Commissioner and Chairman Information and Voter Education Committee of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Festa Socoli, and, of course, we're being joined by James Ebor, who is a legal practitioner. Thank you very much, gentlemen, for joining us. Thank you so much. All right. So I'm going to start with you, James, before I go to Mr Socoli. So, like I said to my first guest, people have referred to the Nigerian electoral process as a broken process. They're saying that it's not one that you can really point to as one that can deliver free, fair, and credible elections. So, and they've pointed out a lot of things that they think the Nigerian government, of course, INEC in itself, need to look at that can reform, you know, the system of our processes in this country. So one of these things that they make reference to is making the electoral commission truly independent by removing the president's powers to appoint whoever sits on that commission and the commissioners, and, of course, allow this to be the job of the NJC. And I did ask the SA and this question, but I want to pose this question to you first before we move on to other issues. Mr Ebor, can you hear me? Oh, I think that we lost him. So let me come to you, Mr Socoli. I think it's left with me when I can you hear me? I can hear you now. Sorry. I'll call the connection. OK, James, did you hear my question? No, sorry. So there are people who are saying that if we must reform the electoral system in Nigeria, we need to be able to take the powers of appointing who sits as the chairman of INEC and, of course, the commissioners and give that power to the judicial council, who in turn will be the ones who give whoever or elect whoever sits at the hem of affairs in INEC. But then my first guest did talk about the fact that the judicial council in itself needs to be reshuffled or reformed for it to be able to make this kind of effect or change the things that are being done in terms of choosing who sits in INEC so that we can have an independent INEC in itself. How easy do you think that this would be for us in a country looking at all the things that we're going through right now? Yes. Thank you very much. Well, the first question is, is the judiciary actually independent? How do we select judges? How are judges appointed? Is the process very transparent and fair that you will begin to apply or give them another responsibility of deciding who becomes an independent national electorate commission chairman? You see, I think we also have the same issues with the judiciary. The judges themselves are not independent. A lot of fraud around how judges are appointed and why we are grappling with that to give them another responsibility of determining who becomes a chairman of an electoral body, I think, will be making the same mistake. What we should be talking about is how do we involve more stakeholders and how do we reform our laws to make them truly independent in terms of their funding, their appointment? How do we involve the National Assembly? How do we also involve civil society organizations or even professional bodies like MBA and other professional bodies, not just handing it over to NJC that is still grappling with a lot of issues? The processes of, we are still complaining how judges are appointed. You see, if you are a judge in the Supreme Court, you ensure that all your children become judges, if the government determines who becomes a judge and all that. So, this has also affected justice administration in Nigeria. So, I think we should not burden the NJC with another responsibility that is not directly linked to their primary duties. Let's talk about the political will before I come to Mr Coy. Let's talk about the political will to reform our electoral process and, of course, Einach yn ystafell. Many people have said that the reason why there seems to be a foot dragging in this regard is because our politicians have interests. They know that if the whole process is sanitized, a loss of them who sit in those offices may not be able to occupy the offices. But I want to be optimistic that there are people who sit in those offices that deserve to be in those offices, who were rightly one way or the other, deserving of those seats. And that's why they're there. But let's dabble into what these naysayers are saying that maybe the reason why there's a foot dragging is because of the interests that are hanging around. It's actually very clear that the reason why we are not reforming properly and rightly is because of interest, because the reasons Mr President gave to decline his assent were actually very they are not acceptable because I think technology is ruling the world today. Why are we very reluctant to change the way we do things, especially the electoral process? Why is it difficult? You saw what we experienced. Let me use MBA as a good example for the first time we had the elections. Electronically and every lawyer who is called to the Nigerian bar had the opportunity to vote electronically and we elected a candidate that I can tell you is very popular and we've seen it through his achievements so far. For the first time we had maybe if my history of MBA election says near as we have or in recent times in non sooner. Of Nigeria imagine as a national president so why can't we give power back to the people to the citizens you know by. I think I'm recommending electronic voting voting where never everybody I know the people talk about issues of network. There is hardly any village I travel to I travel a lot. I don't see banks or POS machines that are run electronically. So we don't even need the cost of producing paper because of producing even a voter card is so enormous that we can convert that money to build infrastructure that will enable electronic voting. But that's not a conversation for 2023 because as we speak that is not in the electoral act bill. The only thing that is in that bill is of course the transmission of results which will be done electronically but the voting issue is a whole kettle of fish on its own but I want to put a pin there and go to Mr. Coyey I'm going to come back to you Mr. Coyey many people have said that after 20 years of gradual improvement in our electoral process the 2019 elections for so many was a step backwards. Now let's look at the challenges that you as INEC have been facing over time and here we are still talking about the electoral act bill that should be signed into law hopefully before the elections in 2023. What are the major challenges that INEC has been grappling with that maybe this bill could address and many more things could be also included in the electoral act bill that could help you as a commission. Well you know as a commission we improve with every election. After the 2019 elections we learned valuable lessons from that particular election and with every election since the 2019 election we have been improving in our processes we have been improving in our procedures and we have also been improving in our management of elections so we improve with every election. Now since the 2019 election we have moved forward we don't look backwards we have moved forward and we have introduced a lot of innovations in the electoral process. Now one of the big things we did was that we looked at the number of pulley units in Nigeria. For 25 years Nigeria operated on the basis of 19,974 pulley units. For 25 years we didn't create any new pulley units. Now we as the time the pulley units were created 25 years ago we had a total register voter population of 50 million. We went into the 2019 election with a total register voter population of 84 million and with the same number of pulley units. So what we did was that we broke a 25-year old jinx by creating an additional 56,072 pulley units bringing the total pulley units in Nigeria to 176,000 846. So that is a big improvement and what we have done is to decongest the existing pulley units and also take the pulley units closer to them and Nigerian people. The second thing we have done since the 2019 election was to introduce the Z-pad for the purposes of electronic transmission and uploading of resources and this has brought some level of creativity and accountability to the general election, to the conduct of elections. The third thing we have done is to introduce the by-model voter accreditation system, the BIVAS, which has improved the dedication process and the accreditation process around elections. So for the EU depending national electoral commission our resolve is to make it impossible for a national electoral commission and for a recent electoral commission and for any staff of the commission to determine the outcome of elections other than the Nigerian voters. So we have been improving with every election. Unfortunately, the challenges around the electoral amendment bill has slowed down some of the preparations we are making because if you look at that particular bill it makes it mandatory for funds for the commission to be released at least a year to the election to aid our preparation because you know preparation is everything. If you plan well, if you are very, very strategic and you have a lot of time and resources to plan ahead of any election, you get things right. So we are looking at a situation where we can start early preparations for the 2023 general elections and get a lot of things right. We believe that we are the right track and we believe that we are going to get things right with the 2023 general elections and it will be a huge improvement in previous elections. Now you are obviously in charge of voter education and that is a there is a big lacuna if you agree with me in terms of voter education in this country. It's not necessarily just you know the job of the NOA. Every time we talk about voter education people say oh the NOA is not doing its job, it waits till it's the eve of elections and then they start the whole hula balu. But this is under your purview and from the the the research I have done there's been a decline over I mean we saw a decline in 2015 but we saw a much more decline in 2019 of voter participation and I'm wondering what your department has been doing because we do not necessarily have to wait for election season to start voter education. This should be part of our daily routine as especially for INAG and of course as Nigerians they need to be educated every other day and it's not just the job of the media is it? Well you know the issue of voter turnout is a global phenomenon. The issue of the decline in voter turnout in Nigeria should be a concern for everybody. The issue of voter education is a multi-stakeholder venture. It involves both the independent national electoral commission explaining to people the processes and procedures for elections. It involves the political parties mobilising people around the issues they stand for, around the ideology and also getting out of the votes. It also involves civil society groups and organisations. It involves the media. In fact it involves all Nigerians making sure that they get out of the votes. More fundamentally it also has a lot to do with the whole issue about governance. It has a lot to do with people's perception whether government works for them or does not work for them. But I completely agree with you that the issue of voter education is key, it's fundamental and should be a given priority. But you know and as I know that the bookography of Nigeria has changed that the issues around the pandemic and the way it has reshaped the issue of voter education, things that we used to do to the Orthodox way previously, we can no longer do that. So the social media plays a key role in what we do now and we have to design new methods, creative strategies, innovative strategies on how to reach the people. I don't know if you can hear me but then we see, I know that also political parties have an enormous duty of making sure that they educate the people because they're the ones who are asking for the votes. I know that INEC's job is cut out for it but is there a way that INEC should also co-opt these political parties? I don't know because political parties have the more burden of educating people who should vote for them but then there are people who are of the idea or the notion that these political parties refuse knowingly to educate people on voting because one way or the other this is, this helps them either, I don't know but I think we've lost Mr Coy. So I'm going to go to James. James do you buy the idea that maybe political parties knowingly don't do voter education because they'd rather not have as many people show up to pulling units so that they can have the honour of, I mean I don't think honour is the right word but they can have the ample opportunity to rig the elections in their favour. The truth most of those things are not discussed informally is that all the political parties strategise why they are mobilising resources to get into the elections. They are also mobilising resources to buy votes. They do this openly and sometimes covertly or secretly. They mobilise, they actually set aside funds to manipulate the electoral process. For instance, we are talking about primaries. Why they are going out to, you know, consult and lobby for votes at the party level. They are also brightening stakeholders and devising means or ways of circumventing the process. That was why we suspected the president refusing to ascend to the bill simply because of the clauses on direct primaries as very suspicious because for the first time we felt political, the citizens themselves will have the power to decide who becomes their representatives and did into the general elections but that the president has denied us and the reasons he gave are not actually acceptable. We had expected that at this stage, I personally had concerns about the electoral bill because we had them initially thought they would retain those clauses on electronic voting. We don't have to go if we want to ensure a free and fair election in this country. If we are going to toe the pattern of development, we need to start because the population is growing. So we can no longer sustain the way we do things, the secret implications. So many people, we are talking about voting at the party. Why can't I vote in the comfort of my room with my Android phone? By the time, because there is no village. Have we really gotten to the point and I'm not in any way playing down on how good our data usage in this country has grown to but then we also noticed that we've had hiccups and downtimes and really the issue, the e-volting conversation is something that we're very sensitive about. So really have we come of age? We are afraid of nothing because Nigeria has even launched 5G. We are using 4G. Nigeria has launched 5G. If we deploy the system throughout the country before the end of 2022, we will be able to have an electronic voting system that will have 90% of Nigeria's voting electronically. Can it be reliable? We've seen our smart cards malfunction. We've seen a president not being able to vote. We've seen sitting president at the time unable to vote. We've seen the beavers, which is a beautiful idea that Ainec has brought into play also malfunction. So what is the guarantee that this might not happen if we decide to go the way of e-voting? The use of the beavers is a very wonderful innovation but I think we have to improve on that system. I'm not even talking about this time around using beavers. I mean voting directly, having a link, linking up and voting. If we can dedicate even three or four days to vote, if network malfunctioned the first day, the second day, you will certainly be lucky to vote. I'm talking about a station where we don't have to deploy soldiers and police officers to cooling units. Our ballot papers are selected electronically. Everything is done electronically. Banks now run electronic e-banking all over the country successfully. So why can't we do it so that we take away the cost of deploying police officers around the country and the unrest, the issues of insecurity and all that to vote on party? Well, this is a conversation that we need to continuously have. Unfortunately, I've been told that we do not have more time to continue this conversation. I want to thank Festas Ocoye and across to you, James Ebor, for being part of the conversation. We appreciate it. Thank you for having me. All right. Well, thank you for staying with us. We'll take a short break now to look at what electoral reforms Nigerians believe the country needs and that's where I live for you and say my goodbytes. I am Mary Annacor and I'll see you tomorrow on PlusPolitics. Well, the first thing in place, I would like our party system to be restructured. So there are so many, there's so much duplicity of political parties nowadays. Now, we do not know which one is APC. We do not know the one which one is PDP. So I feel like first of all, we start with our party system. I believe the forms for pushes of positions, electoral offices is too expensive. For example, I think presidential is about 50 million era just to purchase the presidential form. Not everybody, not every capable person can have that financial capability. So I believe we can start from there. Probably we do it online and where there is not going to be Ogero at all because I know my black brothers, we do Ogero a lot. So I think if we do it like the way they do it in the US, it's going to be fine. Vote online. Everybody have to have a voter's card. It's that one is necessary for everybody to come out and vote. Vote for the rightful candidate. But as of now, if they can bring out the rightful candidate here. For us to have a better election, I believe that there should be freedom and free and fair election. That should allow people, people should not vote for, based on the party. I mean, they should vote for the individual, the contestant, that they believe that he is going to perform. So people should not just judge based on the party, but they should judge the integrity of the contestant. I believe if people can have that kind of my sense, we can have a better election.