 You're welcome back. It's still ballot 2023 and tomorrow is the governorship and state house of assembly elections and if you ask me that is even the most important one because that is the government that is closest to the people. We're looking at the lessons we learned from the presidential and national assembly elections and how that will translate into making or marrying the election of tomorrow. I did promise you that we're going to be joined later on by Reverend Father Raymond Annolieffo. Well he has joined us now. He's the director justice development and peace center, J.D.P.C. Lagos. Welcome to the program Father. Thank you very much. Okay so I've spoken with O.O.M. Woye who is a tech expert and also we started off with Mr. Shagun Shoputon. Now that you're joining us J.D.P.C. What lessons are you carrying from the last election into the second election that is a governorship and state house of assembly elections? Oh thank you very much. Thanks for having me. In the last election, the presidential and the national assembly elections, we were out there on the field and we deployed observers across the length and breadth of Lagos state and then together with the Catholic Caritas Foundation of Nigeria we had well over 3,000 or 4,000 observers across the country. So it was a beautiful one. It was of course there were heightened expectations. A lot of persons suspected a lot of things out of this election. I think the INEC promised us a great deal and we see the youth bulge in the election as well that characterized this election leading up to the election. There was a lot of interest even from the international community and then of course from OSEA in Nigeria. It was also the interest was very high. So I'll say give and take. At that point we all expected that this election would be what is shared in our democracy and it was neither here nor there for us at the JDPC. It neither here nor there in that the one thing that we all looked forward to with regards to the beavers, supposedly being the game changer, I don't think our expectations were adequately met at the presidential and national assembly elections. We felt a little disappointed especially with regards to uploading of the results using the beavers on to IREV. That wasn't comprehensively done across the 36 states plus FCT and here in Lagos of course we had pockets of violence in some parts of Lagos that also mad that that election but that said I think going forward tomorrow's election INEC has something to prove that they are credible that they are capable and they are willing of course to right the wrongs of the presidential elections and we are quite hopeful we're optimistic we'll be there tomorrow again to observe the elections for tomorrow. So we are optimistic and we are hoping that all will go well and this time INEC will deliver on its promises. Has there been any interaction with INEC since the presidential and national assembly elections between the JDPC and INEC? Yes but not directly in that of course between this period INEC had also met with civil society organizations of which we have been part of it and we have also given a press conference in early after the elections just to to let Nigerians know exactly what our findings were while we are out there on the field. So basically INEC has promised not only the civil society organization not only the JDPC but the entire country that they will do better so we there is a there of course there's a trust deficit in our system at this time the trust deficit but rather than throw away the baby and the bathwater let's let's give them a second chance I would say that let's give them a second chance I'm optimistic that they will probably want to right the wrongs of the of the presidential elections between 5th February elections and we hope that the their beavers and IRA of course will serve the peoples for which it was designed for which was created and I would say that was really the toast of the election that a lot of people believe that their votes will count and so we are hoping that tomorrow the votes will actually count. Shegoon you also have dealings with the civil society you're part of the civil society what also what is the strength of your confidence in tomorrow's exercise knowing what transpired at the national assembly elections and the presidential elections and the time in between well I mean pardon me so we've seen a lot of interactions between INEC and and the various stakeholder groups civil society the politicians or the political parties security agencies and even the electorate and you know INEC has said a lot of things in terms of trying to maybe assuage fears lift the confidence but the old saying is that the taste of the pudding is in the eating you know so what we ate on the 25th of February was not tasteful at all you know so tomorrow INEC simply has to do better I don't want to mince words you know without equivocation 25th of February was a disappointment you know for some of us especially for some of us in civil society who had embarked on a lot of voter education you know and all of that encouraging people trying to build their confidence trying to work against voter apathy that you know we've experienced over time as a result of their lack of trust in the system you know it was almost as though we put our personal integrity on the line you know as organizations and to come to the process and find that INEC failed to follow the unprocessed you know was very disappointing tomorrow INEC must do differently they must do better it's very simple I don't think anybody including the main political actors would have too much to say with regards to the result if the process is transparent and if the process is credible and the use of technology was the major basis for the confidence that we all had and for all the good things that we said about INEC about their preparedness about the process that they've laid out you know the guidelines that they sent forward the wonderful in quote provisions of the electoral act you know all of that needs to come together tomorrow we need to see an interplay of all of those factors effectively and ensuring that the process is credible so this is an opportunity for Professor Mahmood Yakubo in particular because you know when we talk about INEC it's an institution but the institution has a head and it is his name that people are calling and I think it's important to let him know that you know posterity and history will judge him one way or the other you know so it's critical that at this point his legacy is one where he can look back and be proud at the moment he runs the risk right now of competing with the 2003 and 2007 commission and the chairman of those commissions which you know is the most ignominious in the history of Nigeria right now Mahmood Yakubo is running the risk well but he has always insisted that he didn't fail Nigerians well maybe we'll come back to that well oh you're still there and we're concerned this same technology that failed us in the last election do you see that it needs an improvement or that same technology can deliver on the promises that were made by INEC to Nigerians tomorrow the same goes fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me I think the biggest mistake made and I've said this in many for a the biggest mistake we made in the last 25th of February was trust in INEC and as a result I don't think anyone should believe what they say and consequently interestingly last week my team built a product called Collette.Africa so the whole idea is simple to replicate what IRF was supposed to be because people when I just thought about it now when Father Anolefa was speaking people said their votes should count yes it actually counts at the polling unit but it's not collated right it's when it's time for collation that we have the theories the stories because the whole essence of IRF was that it goes directly from PU straight to HQ to the headquarters and it could not be manipulated but however I was seeing a case where the tally even on IRF of river states says something completely different a party didn't score up to 25 percent and it was declared winner based on the statistics on IRF today not based on people's own collection aggregation and I think one of the biggest mistakes was in trust in INEC so when people went to the collection center they hadn't prepared to collect images of PU's from their agents or from the third parties so everyone was dependent on the IRF system and when they say couldn't upload and people had gone home only for people to go home and go to the website and see that after 24 hours less than 10 percent of the polling units had had the results uploaded which is a mandatory aspect of the conduct the guidelines for this election so I think many organizations have created their own parallel IRFs and I think every Nigerian that votes tomorrow must as a matter of obligation take a picture of their the the form is it and find a way to upload it so we build something called collate collate dot Africa there are other ones out there but it's very important that we do not trust this time okay we'll come back to how that collate dot Africa works I'm interested because if there's something else that INEC will be afraid of that we should know it not just INEC but when we're talking about people who are serving the public there should be something that we should be looking back and saying okay if we misbehave it is going to fire back at us maybe they didn't have that in the last election and that also goes through the civil society organization and the Jetty Jetty PC it's like when you're having traffic wardens on the road people behave drivers behave so when you're monitoring I'm sure the places that you monitor there will be some sort of order so even with the disappointments that you had in the last election what are your plans for tomorrow the jetty pc okay thank you very much now let me just quickly make that very short clarification here there's a little there's a bit of a difference between the monitor and the observer we were observers only INEC and INEC officials per se are allowed to monitor elections and while we are expected to observe and so going out there on the field our business was to observe that is to watch what's happening to gather information on what's happening to collate those information to analyze them and of course in the end to make a report of what we are found if you ask me if you ask me about the 20 the February 25th election we we actually did go out it was a beautiful one it started very well almost across Lagos State for example where I was the director it started pretty very well and somewhere along the line pockets of orchids came around and regardless of the order that was there you know mayhem broke out of course before then there was the very rife delay in the electoral officers arriving the polling units considerably I think from our statistics only about 30 to 35 percent arrived at about 8 30 a.m the remainder came very late and of course we know what happened it affected the the proceedings and so while we dealt with that on the one hand then violence came but at this point I must say that we were also grateful of the for the security measures that were put in place where they adequate no they were not but they were there was a marked improvement from 2019 there was a marked improvement for the first time I remember in 2015 uh 2015 elections I remember I did I did mention on one of the um media houses that I was at at the time that we should not militarize our elections but I saw myself eating those words in in 2023 I was excited to see the military you know I was excited to see them out there and they they give a lot of confidence in some areas where I was in particular and I'll mention them uh through leary it was some areas were just catastrophic and I could tell you elections would never held in those places if the military did not intervene the military did we at a point in time we were all dispersed from the police stations um bottles were thrown at us it would be a great deal and I thought that we're in my clerical where I'll be accorded some some respect but uh I was very wrong I had to also take cover you know but thankfully we reconvened again when the military came and hopefully and then the elections went on smoothly till the end and of course we observed everything I was there till the end and up until when nobody was going to upload the results and that was when another mayhem almost broke from the electorate who didn't want the annex officials to leave the electoral office has to leave I had to even implore on them that one has to go with them to the world collision center and see what we can do with regards to uploading uh we did take photographs we had photographs of uh the the from eca but of course that was not enough and of course I did check what I had tallyed with what was on iraq at the end of the day uh from my from if you pull it pulling units where I observed of course we also found some where they were a couple of discrepancies which I'm sure they are all out there on social media spaces so I don't need to bore you with that so basically I think I told the line of my brother here and also as well trust has been a problem but to say we are not going to trust um I think I'm an optimist we may not trust fully maybe we'll save benefit of doubt that this time now anek would do what they are expected to do the one single assignment they had to do to deliver on the promises they have made they need to do that iraq the the pulling unit results must move to iraq from the pulling units and not afterwards and of course the observers will be there just to do their business they are not to interfere with the process we are only there to observe the elections and to gather the piece of information we have to to aggregate them analyze them and of course submit a report of also to inek so that they can improve on their on their processes going forward so we are quite ready for tomorrow we're quite ready okay well father they know the fear face you had to take cover it made me laugh sorry well um but this beautiful bride that was the bride that was supposed to be beautiful turned out not so beautiful and she's coming back to ask for a second chance like father has said what conditions are you giving this bride which is inek at this moment uh for this second chance that you're giving what are the conditions that you would like to see tomorrow um just an improvement in the process um first of all the logistics so as of yesterday inek had assured that non-sensitive materials had been moved had been deployed as at wednesday and then the sensitive materials started getting deployed as at yesterday in some places and then you know continues into today um so we expect for example that officials should arrive at the polling unit on time it's a very critical part of the process because there are polling units that have more than a thousand um registered voters there are polling units that have reportedly five thousand you know registered voters how do you process five thousand people in one polling unit when the process will take maybe two to three minutes for each person to finish you know so they need to start on time um of course i think you know rebrand and my brother on on on zoom has also said this the use of technology has to be in place we cannot have stories and excuses about the failure of beavers to upload you know um you know these things are perfect uh the beavers i think like oh i said look this this technology is basic there is nothing spectacular about this machine it's an it's a part it's just a tablet um you know saying that you can't upload on its smacks of some sort of mischief if i may say you know so we'd like to see the technology used we'd like to see inek respect their processes very crucially something happened um pervasively um on on the 25th of uh february a lot of people were disenfranchised a lot you know it's it's it's a you know it appears as though it was a significant number of people who were on the queue as at 230 in line with the provisions of inek of the guidelines and who never got to vote because uh of the effliction of time you know at 6 p.m 7 p.m 8 p.m in some places the inek of shell simply packed up and left with a huge number of people having failed to have voted yet in some places the uh you know the registered voters uh took uh things into their own hands and refused to like that allow the inek officials to leave and they voted till 4 a.m till 5 a.m you know in some instances we have to ensure i think we need to call on inek that they respect their own guidelines what the guideline says if somebody is on the queue as at the closing time of the polls that person must vote you know so this is very crucial i saw that and was very painful um so you see for example that in the result if we're to take those results for what they are on the face value um turnout has been the lowest i think possibly in our history you know 20 20 29 percent or something like that it's it's it's terrible you know and it appears as though turnout was far more than that there was some measure of suppression either deliberate or or perhaps just as a result of processing efficiencies or what have you uh we have to ensure that those things don't happen again we'd like to see a greater turnout tomorrow we'd like to see that turnout results in votes that are counted and like oh said that are collated you know so so there's so much expectation for tomorrow would appeal to inek to just allow this process be let the outcome of this election tomorrow be a reflection of what the people of nigeria all over the country want to see let me just digress a little bit but still remain with you um the presidential election we've not heard the last of it we at least we know political parties that are contesting this in court is the civil society organizations or other civil society organizations in nigeria also having a say and following that case oh yes i mean look the the election um election nearing process um starts long before election day and ends long after election day and um as a civil society organization whatever your role might be in in the value chain of the election process you do have to stay in touch with all of that till the end um so the the ongoing legal challenge and you know what's happening in in the courts in various places let's not forget that it's not only the presidential elections that have gone to court a lot of candidates for you know senatorial districts and constituencies in the house of reps have also gone to courts to try and reclaim mandates that the believer being stolen you know so that process is being followed and we hope and expect to see the judiciary play the role that um the constitution provides for them being the last hope of in this case they're not so common you know but being the last being the the the the the temple of justice where if people that are feeling aggrieved can't get redressed now this is crucial because where that fails you leave room for people to take the law into their own hands and you leave a risk you run the risk of allowing anarchy to rail and you know i'm sure you've heard some of the things that are circulating now about protests and all of that it's simply because people don't trust the judiciary so that process of redress seeking and all of that needs to go through to the end um we hope that the judiciary will not disappoint and we hope that justice will be done okay let me come to you for a word of advice to inek and the people you've already told the people that if you want justice if you want things to be transparent be sure you take photographs of the process and the end results and all that but what does inek have to look out for last time we remember that they claimed that in some places there was no network even when we were promised that they were not even going to use the network providers around nigeria they were going to use network a network that will never fail which we didn't see on that day well some of some of the pointers to inek if they have to look out for things that might hinder the process what are they uh if they're listening now to know i'm usually there's a saying again that goes that you should not attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance um i can confirm that inek is not ignorant on what should be done i think um father um anole for is is quite uh but i say he's he's quite generous with his expectations um i i don't think the we should ever be comparing our elections with bad with wars 2019 terrible we should have a standard of elections someone scores 20 another person scores 27 over 100 we should not be celebrating or even looking in any in any case favorably at the person that scored 27 both are bad we should have a standard 70 percent is the past smack and for quite a long time we have had slight progress but is no longer enough there has to be leapfrogging now the thing is there's really no consequence for bad behavior so i i i don't want to seem antagonistic towards inek i keep on saying that but enough like when nigerians we can do much better than this why why are we giving these excuses it makes no sense to transmit accounts you count 10 for someone and just transmit that information it can be transmitted with an sms there are too many technologies that could fix it so i wouldn't be i keep on saying i wouldn't be trusting it doesn't mean that we could we would not respect or accept grudgingly i don't need to even accept it but we would not we would not be bound by the outcome but we have to take a stronger position on saying that no it's enough this this is soiling our name we saw the the the the outgoing uk ambassador katrina liang saying oh we have come along with infantilizing nigeria in brazil the elections result the election results are concluded that very night in ours two three hours after closing 90 something percent of the results are in so that's the that's where we should be we should be operating i have no advice if i were to advise in in technology we normally do something called post mortem if something goes wrong and you want to end back trust you'll be public about what happened this is what happened this is what we did wrong and this is what we are doing to ensure it doesn't happen again now we're talking of the irf no one knows what happened so who says it's not going to happen again how can you go and just hope inek would not do it again we should go and want them no consequence nothing nothing happens okay so let me let me call you there so that you you have time to tell us a little bit about this collate dot africa that you said is does it have the capacity to make inek sit up for instance just tell us about it first of all so collate that africa is basically everyone having irf so anyone can put in this course and upload the form e68 a sheet simple now it is now it has been democratized so what we're saying is that at any point you could you just come go online collate to laate collate dot africa you register your point units on the day of the election you take a picture of the result sheets president gubernatorial whatever state you upload it and put in this course how can you how can you make sure of that many how can you make sure that this course that are uploaded authentic so because we're not we don't have the we don't have the rights or we don't we're not backed by law what we're optimizing for is transparency so at a polling unit five different people can upload their results so if five of them decide to lie well what I have seen from experience is that Nigerians are not bad actors at scale right so what you would happen is 10 people upload a result one person might be a bad actor nine of them will be correct um for the annual level set when he went online he saw that it was actually the result that was uploaded mine in my case in abba in nanombra states it was the accurate result uploaded but two weeks after um so what we're doing now we have already built something in a week right using our own personnel funds in a was giving a budget of almost a billion dollars three hundred and i mean a hundred billion dollars to build this and they had yes so i next should be i i don't know how they should feel now that individuals could come together and build what they were giving and mandated to do are you all we're doing oh are you all nice built this definitely all Nigerians because it gives me joy to find out that our Nigerians can do what uh we go out we're looking for something in so koto when is this in ashok koto that's not what ashok koto yeah yeah so what built it is agnostic um teams can use it so um you can use it for their teams uh okay thank you thank you oh um because we are out of time right now father let me come to you talk to the people because tomorrow a lot of people will be dragging their feet but from what you have seen from what you're hoping for talk to legutions and everybody in every Nigerian who is watching this right now how you you would like for tomorrow to be like neutrality does not favor the oppressor it doesn't favor the oppressed sorry rather it favors the oppressor um to lie down resigned to fate is madness says olarotimi in his book the gods are not to blame uh so i would say we all have to come out we all have to come out people are disappointed a lot of persons have said they may not be turning up for the elections and with the with the seeming threats and um suppressions and and statements out there uh yachukudi and all of that that we've heard in the last 24th for the 8 hours it has also heightened the the whole thing i would still urge people to come out but i would want to appeal if you remember very well the the the last time we had an engagement i said there are two institutions that need to deliver inek and the security agencies the security agencies are supposed to go after all those who have made overheated the polity in the last one or two weeks leading up to the so that people can actually come out a lot of persons don't want to come out because they are afraid because they think that they may be hot and the security agencies will not be there to protect them but i i i want to appeal we all come out en masse we stay there from the beginning till the end there is a lot of security in number so but if you just allow a few persons to be scattered across the polling units it probably becomes very difficult to um ward away any form of um aggressor that comes but Nigerians should please come out and vote and guard their votes jealously and then inek fulfill your responsibility your task you have only one duty deliver on it okay i share with you well i mean look um i think it's important that Nigerians understand very clearly that this election in so many regards is far more important than the 25th of every election because you are electing governors and um status of assembly um uh representatives who will be making laws that impact you directly in your locality um the local government elections for example is probably even more important than this but guess what this governor that you're electing and the house of assembly guys that you're electing are the ones that determine whether you get actual local government executives or not you know so we can't joke with how important this election is and i think that the only thing we can say is that people should go out go vote and protect your votes go with your phones um you are protected by the law to use them go with your phones and you know um exercise your franchise and protect your votes and then let's hope that inek will do their own part okay ladies and gentlemen boys and girls whoever's watching us right now we're hoping that tomorrow you will go out if you are of voting age we've been we've been talking on the ballot the studio's just open today and tomorrow morning we'll be here to monitor what is happening our reporters will be on the field also giving us information what is happening step by step information we've had father remond annulier for director justice development and peace center here uh with us we've also had shagun shokuton who is a public affairs analyst he's also the chairman of accountability candor and transparency network and he's calling for transparency in tomorrow's election we've had also uh who is a technology executive and i'd like to thank you gentlemen for coming on the program today thank you very much pleasure thank you i wish you all safety tomorrow as you monitor the elections and wish Nigerians safety as well and may the will of god be done until we meet tomorrow morning on the ballot again my name is nyam gul aghaji have a blessed night