 An independent election observer group, Yaga Africa, has predicted that poor turnout of voters will pose a major threat to the success of the November 6th Governorship Elections in Anambara State. The observer group said this as a one-day meeting with newsmen in Oka as part of its pre-election monitoring activities in the state. President Wanguangu, one of Yaga's board members, had said there was no visible sign that suggests that insecurity would hamper the exercise. According to him, the major challenge is to get Anambara electorates to come out and cast their votes. He urged residents of the state who had attained voting age to endeavor to register and ensure that they cast their votes on election day. Also talk about this voter apathy that is in the radar. Joining us to discuss this is Paul James, the Programme Manager of Elections, Yaga Africa. Thank you very much, Mr Paul, for joining us. Thank you for inviting me. Interesting. Voter apathy is not something that's alien to us anymore because we saw this in the 2019 election, presidential elections, we saw it, there was a low turnout and for those, if you follow elections, you follow the local government elections here in Lagos State, you saw almost no turnout for the local government elections and I'm sure that this is also the worry of Yaga in Anambara State. So can you walk us through what you have noticed that has made you worry that much? So this is coming from the fact that we have observed almost every major elections in the country since 2007. The Lagos we mentioned for instance, Yaga was also in Lagos, I was in Lagos and I can tell you election day Lagos was more like a public holiday for some of the voters. It is sad that whilst a lot of investment has been made in our elections, the quality of participation has increasingly become poor. 84 million Nigerians registered in 2019 according to INX registered voters, 72 million collected their PBCs but only 34% participated in that election. If you go also to the government election that happened last year in Edo and Ondo State, participation was in the region of 35% and so you keep wondering the cost of our election keeps going astronomically high but participation continued to dwindle. We are just back from Anambara where we ingest stakeholders on the need to increase citizen participation in this election especially because of what we have observed from the last two governorship elections in the state. In 2013 for instance, voter participation in the election in Anambara was just in the region of 24%. In 2017 when we thought that could have been a change in that, sadly it went back to about just 21%, only about 400 registered voters participated in that election. So the worry always is about the quality of participation especially in state-based or local elections. For Anambara for instance, in the 2015 general election that happened just after the state election, a year or so after the state election that happened in 2013, over a million voters participated in the national election but when it comes to the election that explodes us, the participation keeps dropping. So we are worried that we cannot continue to allow a few, determine the fate of the state, determine who becomes the governor of the state. We saw that in 2017 in Anambara state. People are complaining about the quality of governors and all of that but they lost the moral right to complain when they did not effectively ingest the process. Exactly. You just literally took the questions out of my mouth because I was going to say that we are very good at complaining. I have no grudges against people who rant on social media but we would love to see that rant translate to some action but we barely see those people show up at the polls. Now majority of the people from my research who show up at the polls, those people who take a thousand now are less from politicians. The people who show up for town hall meetings, not necessarily those of us, the elitists, who are on social media ranting. So what do we do for Yaga Africa, your observe elections, but is there some form of information that can be put out to educate people to come out and not just stay on social media to complain about it? What is happening to bring people out of their shells because we can't continue like this in 2023? It's the need for an all-round engagement. Now there has always been the traditional voters in Nigeria that we know that for every election consistently they have participated in the election. But even for those kind of, those categories of voters that we have, sadly because of the things that are happening in the body quality, they are beginning to lose interest in the quality of, in participating in the process. We have seen, I mean, we have seen politicians now weaponize poverty. It comes to election, they give parties some to people and on that basis who go out to vote for them, which is morally wrong, which is very wrong. And then also, we have seen also cases where in the build-up to the election, politicians will heat up the quality to the extent that you begin to wonder what the election will happen or not. We saw that happen in Edo last day before the election. 12 of the 18 local governments in Edo were riddled with all sort of pre-election-related violence in Odo as well. Odo has 18 local government. 13 of the 18 local government had also, they had reported cases of election-related violence. In fact, in one of the local governments in Odo, a woman was stripped naked. So for those kind of voters that are experiencing such in the build-up to the election, that will already put fear in their mind and then will also affect or impact the way they engage in the process called election day. The security that are charged with the responsibility of providing lives and properties, sometimes they wait until very late in the game before they begin to come out to assuage or provide that confidence to voters. So you hear them coming out to do what they call quote, unquote, show or force the week of the election. If, for instance, based on the incident that happened two or three weeks to the election, a voter had started to make up their mind that they are not going to engage. Nothing a security man would do in the week of the election would do that confidence for the voter to participate. So for me, it's about the need for early engagement of the process. Election is a process. It's not an activity or it's not an event that would just happen on November. This is, for instance, an unambarrassed. We saw how also the narrative of 2017, you had some people saying things like no referendum, no election for insight. People buy into those sort of narrative, put fear in the minds of people, disparaging from participating and the election, they will come. You see the turnout will be low. And it is in location that you don't have enough voter turnout. That's is where you see politicians go to manipulate the votes. And that narrative is already building up in Anambra because we saw that also happening in this voter registration in Anambra state. On this, on July the 26th, when INEP officially started the process. Part of Anambra south for instance, that was blockade. INEP were denied access to the registration centers. By some cessationists that were trying to enforce the sit-out term order. Now, Anambra had a shorter time to engage with voter registration. It will end on September 5th. Every Monday night you have, I was in Anambra Monday for instance. That was a total shutdown on Monday. Technically, for people that only have Monday as opportunity to go and register to vote, they have been technically disenfranchised, dispensated from engaging the electoral process. So for all of us... But Anambra has a portal open for people to, you know, register online. It is not enough. That is just a first step. That doesn't do anything. Beyond that, people have to go and do the physical capture at the INEP offices. That has not been happening much. And that is what we are saying. Anambra people have barely, barely a week to conclude this process. It is ending on the 5th. And we want to see that the numbers go up especially in Anambra state. We want to see how that moves from the protests that we see online. Just like you said, the physical engagement of the process. So, for instance, an opportunity was lost on Monday. How do we make up for that opportunity? That should be the kind of conversation we should be having now. Yeah, I'm not a naysayer, but I'm a bit sick of hearing that, oh, this politician said this or this group of people did this and that's why people are not coming out to vote. We have gone through this cycle for years. Haven't we learned anything as the voters, as the electorate? Haven't we learned that this is a tactic that these politicians use just to confuse us and at the end of the day they get to benefit from it? I mean, like I said, we're not talking about the average person in a village in Anambra, we're talking about the people in the urban areas. We're talking about the guys who are in the city, the people who should know better, hardly even show up to vote. So really, if those people are experiencing such apathy, what should the woman in the village do? Well, I just hope that narrative doesn't also go to the poor woman in the village, like you said, because they are the original voters in Nigeria. For most of us that stay on social media, we don't go out to vote. Like the Lagos narrative, I was there, like I said, in Lagos. On election day, it was sad to see young people, young people that are engaged on social media, you see them on the street playing football. It is sad to also hear that that day for some people, the day they thought they should make up for the loss and sleep that they had had. I mean, the education needs to start now. We, bad leaders, will continue to be elected by good people that will refuse to go out to vote. We should know these elections are getting better. Elections are only the peaceful means that we can bring, the change that we desire to see. If elections are not getting better, politicians will not be buying PVCs. If elections are not getting better, you will not be hearing about incidents of ballot bus, national ballot bus stuff. And it is because things are improving, especially in the electoral space. That is why politicians are bringing up every kind of gimmicks that they can find in their own, in their own reading books to ensure that these people stay off the polling units, these people don't go out to engage the process. So the change that they anticipate to see, the change can only happen when they make that conscious decision of engaging the process. And the time to start is now, and not on election day. Most times we hear the argument is that, oh, I would don't like the option that the politicians are bringing up for us. I mean, what happens on election day is just that the, there should be more person about what happened before the election, especially with the quality of engagement of political parties, the political party primaries, the candidate nomination processes in political parties. We don't wait until the election day to be said, oh, the options we have now are between the devil and the devil. And I want to be a mesh in those kind of dirty politics. If young people want to see the change, they should engage, they should join political parties, they should join movement and bring up the kind of candidates that they want to see in the election. And go out also to vote for those candidates. All right. Well, I hope that we learn sometime soon, because I mean, the clock is ticking. And if we want to change, then we have to be that change. Paul James is the programs manager, elections for Yaga Africa. And he's speaking to us on the issue of the Anamba election. So thank you very much. We know that you are going to be monitoring that election. Hopefully we will be able to speak with you when the time comes. Yeah. We are fine. We are not ground from now on to the election. So, yeah, it will be a pleasure to always stick to you about the election. We are observing the pre-election process. So, every week we are going to put out a report on what we are seeing in the build-up to the election. All right. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you, Paul James, for speaking with us. Thank you. All right. Thank you for all of you for staying with us. We'll take a quick break and when we come back, I will give you my take. Well, here's my take. I'm almost tired of saying the same thing over and over again, but I will not relent. You cannot ask for good governance if you are not a good follower. What does it take to be a good follower? If you need to vote in elections, if you want to have free, fair and credible elections, if you want your vote to count, first things first, do you have a voter card? If you do not have it, have you taken advantage of the processes that have been put in place for you to get one? It's not enough for us to rant. Ranting is good. It's not enough for us to protest. Protests are good. But have we been allowed to protest, you know, recently? No, it's become a crime under this government because even the mandate that you have as a person, as a citizen in this country, the office of the citizen, has been gagged one way or the other. Every time the average Nigerian is sick and tired of government playing to the gallery and decide to hit the streets, government shows us force, brings out the army, brings out the police. Now we want to see government show us that force in dealing with the insecurity that we're facing. Where is it? Every day people are being kidnapped. People are being killed. A whole NDA was taken over by bandits. It is a shame, it is an embarrassment, not just on the people of Nigeria, but also on the people that call themselves our leaders. We are heading for a dangerous place. And if our presidents, if our governors, our senators, our House of Rep members do not sit up and face this issue, we might be doomed, unfortunately. But let us not lose hope. If you do not have a voter's card, please go and get it. Stop complaining and start acting. I am Mary Anacol, thank you for watching.