 Kingsley Mogaloo dumps the ADC after losing presidential primaries and group urges INEC to extend its voter registration deadline. Well, this is Plus Politics. I'm Mary Anna Kong. A presidential aspirant of the African Democratic Congress ADC, Professor Kingsley Mogaloo has resigned his membership of the party. Now, in his resignation letter, which was addressed to the party chairman, King Mosul, Mogaloo cited alleged infractions from the party's presidential primary election as reasons for leaving. Now, the former presidential candidate of young progressive party in the 2019 general elections was defeated at the just concluded primary elections of the ADC in Abelkuta. The winner, Dumebika Chikou, as Riorno, scored 977 votes. Mogaloo polled 589 votes to come second. What's running us to discuss this is the director of media strategy to Professor Kingsley Mogaloo, Michael Achimogu, and good governance advocate, Shagun Shopizong. Thank you so much, gentlemen, for joining us. Yes, I completely agree. Thank you for joining us. Great. I'm going to start with you, Michael, because this is about your principle. Before we even get to the resignation part, I have spoken to several people on the issue of the presidential primaries and, of course, what exactly transpired, but you probably were they paint us a picture of what your principle, Mr. Mogaloo, is referring to as some form of corruption that took place at the venue of the primaries. Well, thank you very much. The reasons why Professor Kingsley Mogaloo resigned from the ADC are clearly stated in his letter of resignation to the party and there's no ambiguity there, you know, and it's instructive to note before we go on that he is not the only person who has left the party based on those concerns. You might remember that just yesterday Dr. Shamsuddin Lamedo, another presidential aspirant on the party's platform, also claimed as his resignation citing corruption among other things. And even before these presidential primaries came, two members of the National Tesco, who were based in Lagos, also resigned from the party. I think I came great with and another only because I forget his name now as well. And all of these persons have cited the same concerns. The party obviously did not keep its word, you know, as one that's different from the APC and the PDP and what with the Shamsuddin Lamedo was mis-expected and not agreeable to the principles that I deal with that Professor Kingsley Mogaloo represents. And for that reason, you know, he chose to leave. By the way, I often wonder why someone resigned from the party because he writes, by the way, should be to controversy of any kind, but well, here we are. Hmm. Before we go into the controversial part of it, when you keep you keep saying it's a sham, it's a sham. I'm trying to understand exactly what happened. I did speak to a representative of the Electoral College who also said that there were high hopes for the ADC and that there were young people who were going to be somewhat drafted to the party to understudy, you know, the inner workings of the party. But because of what happened at that primaries, they had withdrawn those young people. Again, what exactly happened that made you or Mr. Mogaloo call this a sham? These allegations, how true are they? We heard that money is exchanged hands. There was imposition of candidates. Who imposed these candidates and why? Who is alleging that money is exchanged hands and money from who to who? Well, we heard that the person who eventually emerged as the party flag bearer had induced allegedly the delegates with certain amounts of money, some was given before the voting and then the rest was redeemed right after because we were not there. I would really like to know exactly what transpired. Before this primary came up, the party itself had issued a communique ordering or instructing all aspirants not to have anything directly to do with the delegate. Delegate them, we didn't even know by the way until the day of the primaries. And it was instructed that all aspirants should donate money to the national headquarters, sectorial to the party so that they would take care of transportation, accommodation and treatment for the delegates. And so we didn't have access to any delegates from outside. Only for us to find out two days, what can be if, rather of the primaries, that a particular aspirant had been giving privileged access all by himself to all of the delegates. We didn't have to delegate them. We spoke to some of the other aspirants as well. And they also complained that they had continued to ask for delegates please and nobody gave access to them. But yeah, we have an aspirant, one of the aspirants who literally confessed himself on TV yesterday that he was meeting between 14 to 15 of the delegate pathways and he was given $900 each to this delegate. We didn't have this information. And we found out as well that despite the party having taken money from us, under the guise of providing accommodation, transport and feeding for delegates, some particular aspirants were allowed to have three arrangements for this same logistics for delegates. We didn't have this information. We didn't have this knowledge. And it went against the rule of the party. And so it gave them fair advantage to some delegate, to some aspirant. It wasn't what we signed up for. Let me come to you, Shagon, because you are a good governance advocate and, of course, you work with civil society. One would point to the big, the major political parties and the major players as, I mean, when we talk about corruption or vote buying, it's all, the fingers are always pointed to the major parties. And then many people would hold the opinion that these other parties might necessarily have better internal democracies compared to the major parties. But we see that the apple in this case does not necessarily fall far from the tree, does it? Yes. Thank you, Marianne. I really, you know, must say that the way this whole process has gone so far, both within the major political parties, APGP3, as I like to call them, because they are one and the same, those two parties. And between the other smaller parties, the way the entire process has gone so far has been disappointing. For the major political parties, nobody expected anything less. Nobody expected anything better. This is how they have run. And the more we have moved forward in time, the work their conduct has become in terms of what the boundaries are. You know, the floor is getting lower. You think that they sunk a bit to the bottom of the ocean, if you like. And then they moved the floor to the ocean, they moved further down. And they moved further down. But for this other party, we have some Nigerians who have wanted to invest a bit of hope in the cost of the fact that they can provide a platform for supposedly better candidates with extremely unfortunate and disappointing to find that it's just more of the same. The only difference is that the magnitude and the scale of the financial value of the exchanges that are happening is there. But you know, the APC and the PDP are sharing $50,000, $20,000, $40,000, $70,000 per delegate, depending on who you listen to. The only difference between them and apparently this other party is that they are sharing $1,000, $2,500, maybe $100 per delegate. And that is extremely unfortunate, you know, because one has hopes that this other party will do things differently and will be able to paha, to do to push for some sort of an alliance between them to fight the two major parties. But now what option, you know, exists for Nigerians if this kind of thing could have been happening within the APC, you know. And so in 2019, similar thing happened in the APC that has Mr. Alialesho Worek, you know, whether he's the candidate or the chairman, nobody even knows, because they're feeling caught, you know. And we don't have all of these types of incidents all over the place, even in the SBT primary, there were strong rumors that the money actually did exchange hand, exchange hand between some of the, the, the, the, uh, parents at the time, and the delegate. So, so where is the difference? So he looked at it, we have a much different, much more fundamental problem on our hands than we realize. And you just, you just played to my next question, Shagon, because I was going to ask first part of the question was, should we write of every other political party because of what has happened in the ADC or what's happened in the SDP on maybe another small party where you have, you know, Showa Worek, should we, you know, just as in hope for other parties other than the APC and the PDP being that we're also seeing similarities, but then going forward should, like you said, there might be a bigger problem, which is fundamental. Does this not necessarily mirror what our society has somewhat watered itself down to? And then of course it lives with the question of how do we change the parties if we don't change the people? Well, so for me, um, first of all, I, I, I like to think of that we cannot blame the society for the failure of its leaders, even though the leaders came out of that society, right? So it's a bit of a cut 22 kind of situation where you're saying, okay, so if the, if the people produce the leaders, then how can society change? But the truth of the matter is that the entirety of society is not bad, you know, and I have always been saying that the average human being has some good in him and has some bad. And for most people, the good generally tends to outweigh the bad, you know. So what determines what happens in the society is the, is the factors that, that, that promote either the good or the bad to be more evident in which individual in that society. You know, so I wouldn't want to say, oh, this is, this is, we have a society problem and all of that. Right now, I think the solution might very well be that we need to identify the good people among us and find a way to get them into office regardless of the political party structure. I'm tempted to ask, how do we get them into office? Yeah, yeah, but how do we get them into office? Because I mean, it's not like you can just have like a, what's it called, a tunnel that we can just smuggle them through. It is a process. And if we must have them in these same political parties that we're complaining about, they are still subject to the establishment, aren't they? So how do we find this way that you're talking about? So for me, I think that the only way forward that I can see at this moment, in this moment in time, at this point in our history, in our development as a country, is for people like Professor Kingsley Morgan, who Michael is representing on this show, for example. And for that candidate, that Nigerian skill has some measure of respect, some measure of hoping to come together. If these candidates, so if they can remodel you, for example, can work with, maybe a picture of you, who some might argue, for example, is not as bad as the mainstream politicians that we have around, can work with maybe an Agiwoli Agibayo, who is the candidate of the Social Democratic Party right now, can work with maybe a caller of Yola, who is the candidate of the supposed redemption party right now, you know, and a number of other people, there are 15 candidates right now on the, there will be 15 candidates on the ballot, right? Out of those 15, can we have seven, eight, maybe nine of them leave their personal interest, their personal ambitions, which to be honest and to be realistic, to be pragmatic are realistic in the person's anyway? None of them can become presidents on their own, none. So can we have a station where these guys come together in some sort of a collegiate structure and select one among themselves to represent the rest of them and best hope in that person to the Nigerian people? Can we see possibly an aspect of some sort from this scenario? The party that that person runs on might then no longer be relevant because there's a movement of the people behind 40 persons and there's a movement of other candidates and other parties behind 40 persons. Obviously there will be a few people there and there in that process, but that, you know, if you have enough of a galvanization behind one person, there might be hope, but will they do this? The question is in the air. Okay, I will come back to you because something just popped in my head when you said if they could all work together, but let me come back to Michael. Michael, your principle is of course the subjects of our conversation. Now he did mention, he didn't rather disclose what his next political strategy would be. I asked this because there was a subtle post by one of the presidential aspirants of the ADC, Chico Kamoye, right after the primaries. He, two words, pitalbi, and then it left a lot of people, you know, trying to speculate as to what his next move would be. But in your case, I do not know. I mean, if Mr. Mogulu has disclosed this to you, but what would be his strategy, his next political strategy, since he's exited the party, and this is not the first party he's exiting, what do you think would be his next move? Now we also know that he has a following of sorts. Obviously it means that if he's exiting the party, his following or his followers will exit the party, what would be your next move? Listening to what Shagun has said, is there going to be a collaboration, a synergy of sorts that would support a person that he might think would be worth working with? There are always a number of options open in moments like this. He just left the country to run a quick medical check. As soon as he's back, we're going to sit down and review what has happened, look at some of these options, and then an announcement will be made. For his supporters, most of them would like for him to continue, you know, perhaps on to another independent party and pick a ticket again, you know, but as soon as he's back, this decision will be communicated to everybody. And I just want to just push you further because of what Shagun has said. How does this make you feel as a young person who's very enthusiastic about, you know, a better Nigerian, and you can see the number of young people who are, you know, coming out to get the voters card being that they want to also be part of the electoral process come 2023. Now, but what's happened within the ADC? What level of hope do you have in saving our Nigeria? So I asked, I said, can you hear me now? Yes, I was saying now that, you know, this has happened within the ADC and for a young person who's supporting an effort for a better Nigeria, progressive Nigeria, what level of hope do you have now in building that Nigeria and rescuing what's left of Nigeria, especially as 2023 approaches? It's encouraging to see. It's really admirable, you know, the revolution, if you will, that's completely ongoing. From the era of the NCRS, two years ago, the Nigerian youth have shown that, you know, they are starting to recognize their powers, and also to what they can achieve, you know, given the opportunity and the right motivation. I can say I know exactly, you know, maybe the momentum right now will be, you know, and I'm actually very glad, both for him expressing, you know, for the Nigerian youth. However, we must still understand that, you know, social media, the government alone on its own does not win the action, but this is a pointer to what is to come and what we can achieve. It's very encouraging, I'm happy about it, and it gives one hope, but we have to see how long we can sustain, this momentum can be sustained, because in my experience, we have, the average Nigerian has a challenge, you know, with sustaining this kind. Michael, are you still there? Oh, I think that we lost that connection with Michael. Well, Michael is, Michael Chimago is the Director of Media and Strategy to Professor Kingsley Mogalu, and of course, Shagun Shopita is a good governance advocate. I want to say thank you to both gentlemen for being part of the conversation. And as we go on our first break, well, we will come back to talk about the extension of voter registration. Now, don't forget, numbers of Nigerians are streaming out to get their registration done so that they can be part of the elections. Come 2023, we'll get to talk to the INEC officials on what their next move will be staying with us.