 A senior advocate of Nigeria, S.A.N., Prof. Paul Ananaba, has advocated for all election petitions to be concluded within 60 days and before solenade. The Supreme Court had on Thursday affirmed pre-stembolati numbu's election, one and seventy-one days after the opposition people's Democratic Party PDP and the Labour Party LP launched their appeals seeking to invalidate its February 25, 2023 wane. But Ananaba is not happy with the length of the legal torso and believes election petitions should be concluded before solenade. His comment comes over 100 days after numbu was sworn in as Nigeria's president. Joining us live is legal practitioner Habas Idiu. Barista, welcome to Plus Politics, a technical glitch. We're going to short break and come back. Hello Barista, are you back now? Yes. Fantastic. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you for grazing the show. What's the response to the suggestion by the senior advocate of Nigeria? It's eminently desirable in the best circumstances to have all election petitions concluded definitely before swearing in. But our judiciary has significant challenges which would make that tricky to achieve. So as compared to other jurisdictions or other countries, our judges still take evidence long hand. They have to write everything down and the challenges of proving election malpractices which you have to bring witnesses from polling units, individual polling units. It's a huge task to assemble all of your witnesses across the country and to present all of that evidence within 60 days. So therein lies the challenge we have in Nigeria. And if we tweak the law to enable petitioners to deal with fewer witnesses, then that could be achieved. Yes. I said it would be very difficult to achieve without a fundamental amendment of the law with regards to witnesses that the petition needs to pull forward to establish this case. Okay. Could it be the fact that the adversarial nature of our jurisprudence across, you know, maybe on election matters, maybe we should be going in the direction of practicing or using something more inquisitorial where an entity like INEC will not be seeing itself, defending itself, but helping the judicial authority to establish the veracity of what really happened. Because it does seem what we practice now, if your pocket is not loaded, you may not even have the way with all to garner all the requisite evidences you need to invalidate, invalidate the pronouncement of victory for somebody else. What do you think? Absolutely. You have made a fine point there. However, there are benefits to the adversarial system as well as the visitorial system. What we have as a major drawback is the fact that the adversarial system, like you do think that considering what's before us and our recent experience, lawmaking should be looking at reducing that time frame via the constitution, via a constitutional amendment to say all of these matters should be concluded and for the evidence that should be given, but maybe it could be an abridged version of this evidence so that petitioners can quickly prove their case and verdicts could be given well before swearing in. Some persons have also suggested the idea that the elections could be over, didn't say nine months before. Sorry, Nain. I know for some people that in itself is off putting, that is too much of a gap between one election score. But I know that the politics may not be many, but in say one of these Latin American countries is taking about six months. Even in Nigeria we have three months before the president-elect or the governor-elect has won it. So maybe we should just elongate the time a little bit more, say five to six months so that all legal disputations and litigations would have been settled before swearing in. What do you think about that? Absolutely. That sounds like a good idea if it's put to test. However, there are significant obstacles to getting that on the way. For instance, how would you win an election and then it would take nine months before you were sworn in? I mean, we know what happens in Nigeria as soon as a victor is declared winner. All governance stops. So for instance, if a governor-elect has won the election, he immediately starts to operate as a prior government. It will lend up the incumbent administration that nothing tangible will be achieved. I quite agree with you. But what about a barista? We may just be cheating eczema at the expense of skin cancer when we are not even looking deeply into some of the recommendations of always a committee because some of the fundamental causes of the problems we tend to have are quite more than the votes cast or the activities of the day of election itself. For example, three days ago, the incumbent president nominated for Senate's confirmation 10 national electoral commissioners. And if you really look at it, the president is also a partisan at some point. These people would be involved in managing an election that he may be part of. What's the take of that? Well, unfortunately, it is the prerogative of the president to nominate the resident electoral commissioners who might go by the constitution. Of course, the national assembly has a role to play. In recent years, we haven't seen the effectiveness of the national assembly in those areas. But definitely, if the president nominates people who are lacking in integrity, the national assembly should step in and reject those nominations and demand that the proper people forward. It should be a significant disadvantage of having the kind of presidential system that we run in this country because the president virtually has all the powers to do as he wishes to despite the fact that he may be a player in the same game. So you have a player referee who does not quite give much credibility to the game itself. Absolutely. I won't wonder why are we seemingly stuck in this because the waste committee's recommendations are now quite modern decade. And indeed, the immediate past president and incumbent president seemed to have vociferously supported some of the recommendations of the waste committee when those recommendations were given. Why is it that we are still stuck where we are? Well, unfortunately, the paradox in Nigeria is that the people who are meant to implement these recommendations or these laws are usually people that stand to benefit the most or lose out the most if these things are implemented. So there's always a skewed approach to implementing some of these things. And the national interest isn't a priority. It's usually personal interest which makes these things look the way they eventually turn out. My personal opinion would be that those recommendations were the best interest of this country and they should be implemented as speedily as possible. But the president still has a huge say in all of this and unless his interest isn't particularly affected we might not see these recommendations in the light of day. What's the president? Maybe I'm too addicted to East 2. But this is even a recent East 2. There was a president who after he won, after he was declared the winner at the Swerin ceremony, there could be, we may sometimes have people with higher values and greater predisposition to a country than selfish this thing. Or am I just being delusional maybe because I'm not a politician? Well, you're not being delusional. I think you're looking out for the best interest of the country. However, we have noticed that as time has gone on, the quality of intervention when it comes from top people in politics has gone down. We're not having a lot of national interest at play when decisions of this nature have to be taken. But then again, all of this depends on how effective the national assembly is because the national assembly should do its job to balance the powers of the executive. I believe if the national assembly puts down its foot, some of these things would take shape. However, we have a national assembly who is more interested in being in bed with the executive and not offending the president. So until something is done in that regard, we may have more of the same. Sorry for taking you in directions that you may have not prepared for but you are alluding to the national assembly now and actually makes me want to say but you know what, this is the most colourful, don't let me use the word colourful, this is the most divergent in terms of political parties. This is the most divergent national assembly that we've had in years or sessions of the national assembly. So are you saying that this national assembly as the virgin, as it is ostensibly on paper, may just be as sublime as the previous sessions, say the ninth session that was actually often lampooned for imbecility or being sublime? Well, the more things change, the more they stay the same. I believe this nationalists, this particular prop of legislators have been accused of being too close to the executive and as a matter of fact, we've heard stories of bills being passed without proper debates and this seems to be an unnecessary inclination to please, it's still early days yet in this national assembly while not completely writing them off but it doesn't look good when you look at the body language of senators, look at the economic crisis we have faced in this country and we have a national assembly that hasn't pronounced, hasn't said anything about what we are going through as a country. It doesn't give us, it doesn't give the electorate a lot of confidence that they have the magic wand. Some of the unfortunate developments making sure that our victors in elections fully get litigations around their victories resolved before their sowning seems and sounds wonderful. To the eastern electoral act maybe some ideas that you want to share with them. Sorry I didn't get the question, could you repeat the question? I'm saying you have some ideas that they should put in. Absolutely. This is your random question. Appearments for the petitioner to bring witnesses from each polling unit across the entire spectrum of where the elections exactly, exactly. And that doesn't help, that doesn't help at all. So the electoral act can be amended the same way we've heard from the justices of the Supreme Court about substantial compliance with the electoral act meaning that the elections were okay and should not be nullified. We should have a situation where there could be substantial compliance with the requirement for witnesses if there has been widespread report. You have been so engaging and you have really enriched the program tonight. Thank you for your presence virtually. Thank you for having me. Thank you, pleasure. Today's throwback is how the greedily ambitious opposition leaders have often crowned the American in less popular national ruling parties. Any student of Nigeria's National Electoral is to mechanically glean a very paradoxical phenomenon in the results of the previous and recent general elections in the country since the first federal or national polls in 1959. The opposition, quote-unquote, usually out of the vaulting ambitions of its historic and present leaders tend to unwittingly or gollybly crown the usually numerically unpopular winners. In the 1959 general elections the elections which produced the first federal government became the prime minister who controlled the executive powers relative to the titular ceremonial office of the president. N.C.N.C. Dr. Enam Diazikwes Party because of its popularity in both the eastern and western regions scored the highest number of numerical votes. Two million, five hundred and ninety-four thousand five hundred and seventy-seven votes being thirty-four point zero one percent of total votes cast and eighty-one parliamentary seats. Actual Congress, Actual Group A.G. of Chief of Baphemia Woolow got one million, nine hundred and ninety-two thousand three hundred and sixty-four being twenty-six point twelve percent votes with seventy-three seats of those cast with one hundred and thirty-four seats. The higher number of seats must have been because of the generous delineation of constituencies by the outgoing colonial government in the huge geographical space of the region. That notwithstanding if the two leaders of the N.C.N.C. and A.G. had agreed to form a coalition government which had the lowest numerical votes would have not been the party of government. In nineteen seventy-nine after the three military regimes of in Russia and at the dawn of the Second Republic President Shayush Agariz N.P.N. scored five million six hundred and eighty-eight thousand eight hundred and fifty-seven votes being thirty-seven being thirty-three point seventy-seven percent of total votes cast unity party of N.G.A. U.P.N. and N.P.P. of Chiefs Woolow and N.Z.Q. got four million, nine hundred and sixteen thousand four hundred and fifty-one have been twenty-nine percent and two million, eight hundred and twenty-two five hundred and twenty-three being sixteen point seventy-five percent respectively the unfortunate pattern often knowledge by the it must be me and nobody else attitude of our politicians repeated itself in the February twenty in the February twenty-five twenty-three presidential ballot it was only in the national elections in which a baller Ahmed Tinubu courted a consecutively electorally wasteful and frustrated Buwari that the strategic alignment of forces in the opposition's ranks defeated the ruling party in conclusion this synoptic historical discussion into our democratic past speaks to a brazen fact at no time in our democratic history as the party in control of the federal government ever had the votes of fifty percent of the total registered voters not and does it on the show tonight I am Buwari