 The Independent National Electoral Commission, INAG, has earlier warned political parties and candidates against the use of mascaroods, public facilities and religious centres for campaigns. Also, Govnoy Fanyokawa of Delta States, the running major of the People's Democratic Party Presidential Candidate at Chikwapuboka, has berated the Labour Party flag-bearer, Mr Pitar Biover, his outings to churches. He lamented that out of desperation some presidential candidates are currently reaching out to anything, even at the detriment of their fate, just to win the February 2023 general elections. Joining us to discuss this is Isilgo Nnamdi, he is the co-founder of Excellent Africa, and Choma Izenwafot is a journalist at West Nigeria Info Pothakot. Thank you so much gentlemen and lady for joining us. Thank you for having me. Great. I'll stop with the lady. Now, Choma you're a journalist, obviously, when INAG came out with this specification as to how campaigns should be done, I'm sure that you obviously have had conversations where people talk about why religion and of course politics should not mix, but is there really a thin line between religion and politics because some people would argue that there isn't? I would always agree with that point that there isn't just playing Nigeria where we are really a religious nation. A good population is Islamic and the rest is Christians and then minority are traditionalists and we've been unable to over the years differentiate between what we see happen outside that. The religion is a product of society and our society is highly political and so it's difficult to differentiate it too and I think this is really the first time that INAG has come to say that they should not take their campaigns to church. It's the first time and a lot of things have actually informed that and some people will tell you that because obviously it doesn't allow for a free conversation. I want to think of religion and where the reality of life is it doesn't allow for a free conversation. But then again, the politicians find it quite difficult because the crowd they meet in churches are different from the crowd they meet when they go for their grassroots campaigns and when they try to interact. That remains one gathering that allows them to meet a group and the crowd they don't meet when they really do their legwork. I look forward to September 20th when campaigns start and see how they are going to work around that. I look forward to seeing this. A lot of young people, there's a movement on social media. The movement now is seeing a lot of walks in honour of this person and that party. It's more like a game of numbers now. Let's see who can pull the most crowd to go for a health walk or whatever work in honour of a political party. But then we're also seeing that these political candidates are going to churches and when they come into these churches we see reactions of the people that are in those churches and some of them are going to other places of worship just to fellowship with those people. Is that something that we can really frown at or should we leave the church where it is or the places of worship where they are and of course allow these campaigns to happen elsewhere? Thank you very much Maryann. Actually we have to frown against this because faith is personal. What I mean is it's between a man, it's an interaction between a man and his God. But when it's organized faith then we're talking about religion and religion as part of our society is something that has politics and Bible in it. So what INAC is saying and what people are saying so that we do not pay the hefty price is that we have to separate politics and religion. The place of worship is a place of worship and it's something that you deal with the deepest part, the feelings, the psychology of the people. So campaigning in a place of worship actually it's unethical and within instances like in Cannes where the former governor was unseated even though he was performing very well because of religious sentiment and the people of Cannes paid for that for as long as eight years. So they have to even go back and beg that individual to come back and continue ruining them and beating them in the path of development. So I think moving on towards 2023 Nigerians should be very careful, critical with the right questions. We should avoid state capture actually. Let's talk about clarity on this. Back to you trauma. Now I'd like to go to, I would like to reference the director of programs for Iyaga Africa Mrs Cynthia Mbambalu. She talked about issue based campaigns and not the usual abuse and personal attacks being that she's saying that look elections is a process through which we choose our leaders. People who can take charge of driving this democracy and sustainable development and this is the period for us to identify who these leaders are. But the only way to do that is by listening to the candidates. So if a candidate comes to my church and decides to, my personal decides to give him the microphone. Is that a crime? Even though Inaq is saying that they are subject to imprisonment of about 12 months. But then the poor people, just hold on. The poor people is also a place of admonishing people, educating and informing them. So if a preacher also takes on that role of trying to, let's say campaign of sorts or try to make people pander to a certain person, should that preacher also be subject to this, let's say 12 months imprisonment? Yeah, I think clearly that it involves everyone. Everyone, we are all part of the electoral program. And we are all subject to this same law. This does the amended electoral act. And I understand is that the electoral act section 92, subsection three and four, And so whether you are the cleric or you're the politician, I believe that when we allow the electoral act to be implemented to the very left, I think to actually ensure that we see the free and fair election that we are all dreaming about. And so, yes, I believe that the clerics understand what to say and going all out to tell people. And that's also what's been happening actually shows that a lot of us have not gone to study the electoral act. The civil society like the likes of the one that Cynthia and Barbara belongs to continue to say this, that a lot of people, people in the political party and the candidate do not know what the new electoral act is. And so it's very important that we go according to ourselves with this so that we do not shoot ourselves on the foot. And so if they're saying worship centers, public offices and police stations do not contain in these places. I think, yes, we should pay really close attention and avoid campaigning when it begins with September 28. You're a young person and I'm sure that you're also trying to, or you work with young people. And one of the things that you would be interested in doing is to try to get more young people to be interested in the political space and not just because they want to run for office, but to also understand their rights and responsibility. So let's talk about young people. Chama just made a very interesting point. There are people who do not even know what is in the electoral act, let alone understanding what it's saying about certain issues around this electoral process. Why do you think that young people are more sentimental towards who they want to vote or the electoral process in itself as opposed to understanding the nitty gritty of our electoral process? You know, this is where we talk about education and currently in Nigeria there's an existential issue when we talk about education. And sometimes also we want to be very, very careful about our followers, the momentum that is going on right now. There are several movements. People are being moved by sentiments of drive, religion, ethnicity. But all these diversities actually are supposed to play a key role in how we view our nation. We can harness them properly into something that would be very colourful and even attract a lot of things to the country. But it's not happening because there's a lot of push towards state capture. I'm still repeating this because I understand what is happening right now. And people are not critically thinking, looking at things which include the capacity, the competence and the character of the individual who they are following. But I think young people have an opportunity right now and they have to be strategic because the decision which they make will actually affect them. We've seen that in 2015 but I'm happy also because there's a vibrant citizen engagement that's happening in the country right now. So moving forward actually we have to be more strategic, more ideological, look at all of the platforms and the candidates and look at what ideology stands out. Education is a priority, the kind of education we get, how our values systems also are inviting these ideologies. These are also very critical. So you know already I'm a conqueror here so it's not like I want to promote my platform. Well again, this is not a forer to campaign for anybody so who you want to vote for, it's your personal business, that's not allowed. I'm personalising it because what you're talking about is young people and I know what is happening within our own group. So I think in moving forward a lot has to happen with regards to our critical analysis and thinking in choosing the right leadership. Great, back to you Choma. Again as a journalist I'm putting you on the spot here. When we talk about issue-based campaigns pointing people in the right direction and of course because we are curators of better culture conversations, whatever it is, the media always gets the blame of one way or the other being complicit in how these narratives are pushed. Even if these politicians are saying certain things they say they were supposed to be the ones who curate how the public digest this information. How well do you think the media is doing in terms of curating conversations, pushing the narratives as opposed to emotions and sentiments, especially with the screaming headlines that we have today? Really Mary Anne, a lot has changed and we no longer have the agenda-setting theory of the media. I mean the people set the agenda now and then we just observe and then we watch and then we document, we archive what's going on really when you look at the media. Currently we barely have any media setting any narrative no matter how dominantly dominant that media organization is. So I'm saying this to say that the media currently at one road they come to play is to continue to, should I say, social media is unregulated, there are no restrictions and a lot of the people talking about what I'm talking about right now are really going about it on social media, not going about it on the mainstream media. I mean they do a billion on Twitter spaces that were on for 24 hours and they were having conversations of this nature. We cannot have such a conversation on any mainstream media. We cannot talk for 24 hours even if we want to. So that shows you that the agenda-setting function of the media is kind of shitty right now. And what do you think is responsible for that? Let me use the word rendering here loosely or that foot dragging per se. What do you think is responsible for it? Why are we seemingly taking the backseat instead of being the ones who are pushing the narrative or setting the tone for conversations right now? Social media, the internet, it's evolved every other thing, it's evolved every aspect of life and media isn't left out. So when you say issue-based campaign, I would say that the media, yes, we still have a role to play but agenda-setting seems not to be a part of it anymore. Issue-based campaign purely because we are, like you said, we are custodians of history and we write down, we write history. And we document these things and so what we can provide is in-depth knowledge or in-depth information of conversations that are going on out there, going on on social media especially. And for me, that's one thing I would say media houses should begin to just their old records and their old new documents and begin to push out conversations that have been had before now and just to enrich the conversation that's already going on. But agenda-setting, any media house that wants to set an agenda may just be overwhelmed and maybe pushing it really too far because currently, as I'm talking right now, over 10 Twitter spaces are on and none of them are being aired by the mainstream media. They are being driven by individual CSOs and political parties themselves. So agenda-setting function is taking the backseat but the media remains at the forefront of driving issue-based conversations. And one of the things we're respecting from them, especially journalists, is for them to be getting to the heart of that conversation. So what are the issues? We are saying that we do not want our doctors leaving the country anymore. We need journalists to get down to the embassy and get down and let's have documents of an exact number of people leaving so that we do not have, because at the end of the day, when people want to have conversations, they're still going to Google. And when they Google, I want to get the right information. The mainstream media platforms out there, their website, is what these people having conversations on social media rely on to feed the right information and share and continue their conversations. So agenda-setting may be taking the backseat for the media, but they still have a big role to play and that is to get the facts right, put out the facts as a means to fact check every conversation that is being had. And that's one way they're going to play when the campaigns begin and we really want them to be issue-based. But I must say that that's really a tough one because I've followed the politics in Nigeria for a while now and I will tell you that we are so used to toxic policy. I mean, the policy is so toxic and it's almost difficult. I mean, currently political parties are going to the grassroots and they say they are doing PVC drives. When you listen to what they say during these voter scads sensitisation campaigns, you know that we're obviously going to have a very toxic campaign going on when it begins. That's really sad. OK, well, we're out of time. In a minute quickly, Eze, so we see this special cult following. We see these hashtags, whether it be the obedience or articulated or whatever you want to call them, the conquasias. We see these movements, but how will these young people who are following these movements, how will you be able to check these aspirants, check these political parties to make sure that they are going in the right direction? Because it's not just the political parties that should be directing. We see people fighting. We see people insulting one another. We see some negativity. We've seen some celebrities also call out these movements to say you're going about it the wrong way. How can these be changed and checked going forward because campaign season is upon us? Yeah, actually, our issues are collective. What I mean is that at the end of the irrespective of the divide, be it political or ethnic or otherwise, culture, we have an issue whereby we all peer the brunks together. Even the people who have the money now, they cannot even enjoy in the country. I mean, not pleasure or even have some kind of pleasure. So what I'm saying in moving forward is the young people needs to come together. They need to form a collective. We've initiated an idea where we say converge for new Nigeria. This idea is in such a way whereby we want to bring people irrespective of who you support, irrespective as long as you're a young person. We want everyone to come together. We'll have a singular platform. We'll share ideas together. We can invite these people to this platform at independent locations whereby they can come. And then we'll ask critical questions. It's going to be a one-on-one interaction. So I think coming together and chatting away forward my young people, it gives us, if evil people say it will be okay, so let's do this irrespective of the divide. Let's speak one person, let's support this person and at the end of the day we can be happy. I want to say thank you. Isugor Namdi is the co-founder of Excellent Africa and Charmai Zenwafor is a journalist. Thank you so much gentlemen and lady for being part of the conversation. Thank you very much. Thank you. Well thank you all for staying with us on the programme tonight. We'll take a quick break, but before I go, I'll give you my take. The value of a vote during an election cycle should never be underestimated. Politicians will move mountains to get enough votes. We know this. And when it comes to presidential elections, the amount of money and personnel committed to getting our vote should both flatter us and worry us about what these politicians would do. Should they get our votes? Now it's a numbers game. We all know this and the candidates always pitch the attempt where the numbers to be one are the highest. So we should not come to you and I as a surprise when states like Lagos or Canun get descended upon in months leading to the election day. The candidates become more attentive to us and become more caring towards our needs. Such attention is all well and good, but never forget it. Only last for as long as they need your votes. So pay attention and be wary of strangers bearing gifts because you'll be paying for it in the next four years. I am Mary Anacorn. Thank you for watching. Have a good evening.