 Redeem your e-mage, Middle Belt and Southern leaders tell the Nigerian Senate and the Federal Government bothers only about oil pipelines in the Niger Delta says environmental activists no more. That's it. How true? We'll get to find out because this is PlusPolitik and I am Mary Anna Corbyn. The Nigerian Senate has been advised by the Southern and Middle Belt Alliance to redeem its already battered e-mage using the opportunity of the Conference Committee on Electoral Act to vote in favour of electronic transmission of election results. The Senate President Ahmed Lawan had set up a conference committee of the Senate which would meet with the House of Representatives team to resolve the impasse on the electronic transmission of election results. The Senate leader Abdullahi Yahya who would lead the committee also includes the Senators Kabeeru Gaia who is of the North West, Ajibullah Bashiru South West, Danjuma Goje of North East and others. Well, to break this down, father we have joining us Tamino Williams, he is a legal practitioner, Olawale Okunui, Director General Intervention Movement, NIM and Ola Lekon Ighe. He is a social commentator. Thank you very much gentlemen for joining us. Yeah, thanks for your viewing. Great. I'm going to start with you, Barisa Tamino, because this is a legislative matter and every Nigerian, even those who are not as educated as you and I, understand that there has been some form of a stop or let's say an elephant in the room in terms of the major issues that should be addressed in the Electoral Act bill that is undergoing amendment. Now there was a huge outcry as to the fact that there was some bogusness around the electronic transmission of results in that particular document. The first was that the National Assembly wasn't certain if this was possible in the first instance and then there was a second where the INEC was asked to liaise with the NCC to see if this was possible and INEC has come out, time without number, to say, well we have done this, we can do this, it's not a problem and we can handle it. We do not need the NCC to hold our hands. But then the National Assembly went on recession, they're back. We still haven't heard anything, apart from now that the Senate is putting together a committee. Do you see this committee addressing the issues, the major issues that Nigerians are most interested in, in that amendment act? Well, the first issue is that when you talk of law or when you look at it, when you conspire to law as a phenomenon or as a social guide, it's supposed to reflect basically the values and aspirations of the people. That is why if you look, if a Christian in the Bible, God told Adam, thou shall not eat thy fruit. If fruit itself was not bad, it was not wrong. But for God, it was the law that thy food should not be eaten. Now, if we come back to the point in issue, the issue of transmission of election results is what people desire. But whether that desire is practicable, whether it is the best at this point, and whether technically it can be done, these are completely different issues. But for us, my focus and what I want to happen is that whatever the desire, whatever they want to do in terms of the conference committee will be a function of law, a function of policy, and a function of what some persons feel is their best interest. So in summary, the synods and the house of reps will do whatever their principals want them to do. Their main consideration for what I have known and for what history has taught us has not been whether this particular piece of law is at this point the best for the people. I'm sorry, I want to take you up on something. Did you say, I'm not certain I heard that right. Did you say that they're going to do what their principals want them to do? Who are their principals? Because if you ask me, we should be the people that you're referring to. These people are there representing us, except the reverse is the case. Are they representing themselves? Now, the principal, the principal can be either three categories of principals. The first is that every elected officer is supposed to come back to his constituency and then take their mandate, console them. And from a creek and reverse it, and even in your own community. When you see your members of reps or synods come to say they will be voting on electoral transmission, by transmission. What do you want us to do? So more often than not, they don't come to consult. So that's why I say that at the end of the day, there are political groups interests that feel that to transmit the result electronically is not favorable to them. That is one group of principal. Others feel that, look, this is what is best for us to succeed. So, and then you have the people in the house themselves, among themselves, using this particular event as a tool for negotiation. So there are three categories of interest and principal. So I'm saying that if the reps, the members are going to come back to consult us, you can surely see the reflection of the people's wish. But I fear that will not happen. Olalekon, this is interesting because I have had this conversation when it first became news and the umbrella as to whether or not the issue of electronic transmission of results should be even brought into play. Now, we're in the 21st century. You get your monies. I mean, I'm sending you some money. I would obviously ask for your wire transfer details and I would do that in a few seconds and you'd get it. I mean, literally anything, I could send you an email and it would drop. If you are a teacher in a university, most of those results now are uploaded on the sites where people just go there and check. Why are we still going back and forth on this issue? And this is not even the biggest of it. We're not even asking that we start e-voting. We're only asking for the transmission of these results to be done immediately at the polling units so that we can reduce the level of electoral fraud. Why are we still dragging on this matter? Well, I think I agree with what Baistar Tamil Nadu said. I think it is down to the people. The members of the National Assembly will need to come back home and talk to the people, ask the people, what is your opinion? What do you want me to do? You voted me into office and what are you expecting me to do? On the floor of the house, should I vote in favor of electronic transmission of results or not? I think those are the basic factors we have to look at until we're able to answer all of these who continue to go back and forth. For me, there's nothing spectacular in transmitting results. We should be able to do that. We have the facility. We can enhance the facility that we have at the moment if they are not sufficient enough. We have probably all of, you know, 90% or 85% of Nigeria covered by the mobile telecommunications company in areas where we may find it difficult to transmit results. I'm sure we can come up with certain measures that can ensure that we transmit results online and real time. There's nothing spectacular. There's no rocket science about this. And that is what the majority of Nigerians want, transmit results as soon as they are ready so that we reduce this level of manipulation, this idea of holding an INEP official postage or this idea of running away with the materials for the results sheet and all of that. This will just be immediate. And that is exactly what we expect members of the Senate to be able to do, vote in favor of electronic transmission of results. Like lawyers will only say, you can't build something on nothing. Let's first of all achieve this idea of being able to transmit results electronically. Then we can move to the next stage of having electronic voting. But the challenge here is that you and Barista Tamino have already said that, look, the people are the ones to have to say, but the people here seem to be the ones who are not being paid attention to. Now, I also like to take your minds back to the fact that before this amendment took place, there were members asked to go back to their constituents to have town halls. We saw them, I think they were done in regions. And people came there with petitions, people came there with their ideas, people made demands. So I'm trying to understand again, where are those demands? I remember we covered them as the media, we covered those meetings. Where are those demands? Why are those demands not implemented? Because if they were implemented, the kind of blowback that the National Assembly is getting because of this electronic transfer of results or transmission of results would not be there in the first place. So it takes me to the next question, which is accountability. Will we ever experience accountability if we have made some of our demands known? It's not that we're saying them in our bedrooms. Opportunities have been given. Even when our leaders are not accessible, we give those opinions. But what is done with those ideas and opinions that we put out there? Well, I think it's left for us as a people, until we make elections free, fair and credible in Nigeria. Until we make the votes count, we'll continue to have people who will not be accountable to the people. Because if you say, look, did they really vote for me in the election? Am I accountable to them? Until we're able to change our leaders whenever we desire. And one of the best ways to be able to change our leaders whenever we desire is the idea of transmitting the results electronically. Once we know, once leaders know, once politicians know, once those who hold these political voices know that these electorates can change them every four years, I'm sure a lot of them will begin to sit up. They'll be able to take a lot of us seriously. Because at the moment they feel did they really vote for me after I won the election by my own wins and caprices. So why should I be responsible to them? So until we're able to get our elections right, and it's not just about getting elections right, it's also to ensure that we who are the electorate, do we even go out on election days? How many of us even have the voter's card? So it's not just sufficient enough to even mount the fact that look our representatives are not talking to us. Do we also go out on election day? Do we have the voter's card? Do we vote rightly according to our conscience or we are influenced by the amount of money that we were able to make on election day? So it goes a whole lot back. It must start with us. We must be able to do things right. Perform a civic responsibility of being able to vote during the election and ensuring that votes come and ensure that the results are transmitted electronically and once political office holders know that electorates now have the power in their hands to change their leaders every four years, they will begin to get things right and they'll begin to take us seriously. Mr. Tamino, again, I worry because when we keep saying, or you and Olaleko keep saying, well, until we, the people begin to vote right until we do this and that, until elections are made free, fair and credible. I had a 78-year-old, if I'm not mistaken, 72-year-old yesterday on this show and all he kept saying was that he did not want to debate on politics but that he wanted to talk about good governance and I said good governance cannot be necessarily separated from the politics of it. We must have elections. We must have free, fair and credible elections. And he said something that I'm still tinkering on which is until we're ready to take the bullets, until we're ready to occupy, until we're ready. But I ask, will the same national assembly who is responsible for making these laws that would help us have free, fair and credible elections do it, if they do it, that obviously does not, does that not mean that they're causing their nose off to spite their face? Again, if we see them not doing this, how do we hold them responsible because the only way that we can go to get good governance is through the ballot. But if the system is rigged against us, the people, what other avenues can we employ to be able to get these people to be accountable to us because we, on the other side, are more than a handful of them who are leading us? Our situation is there. We are in what we call political quagmire. A quagmire is like when you fall into a pit. You don't have any means of climbing up unless you have to put in extra effort. And let me tell you, we pay fundamental alphabets, say free, fair and credible, FFC. Now, where we are in Nigeria, our focus, we're talking about transmitting results electronically. Election, essentially, is not an event. Election is a process. So, what do you have? Apologies, we're having some distortions and connection issues. But we're hopefully thinking that we could be able to have them back on. Vice-Tamino Williams, can you hear me? Loud and clear. All right, let's try this again. Go ahead. Okay, I'm saying that what these guys have done is to take our attention away from the substantive issue, which is free, fair and credible, FFC. Now, election to transmit is just an event. But election is a process. And if the process does not start well at the beginning, we transmit the wrong thing. Let me bring you to a restaurant. The food that is served on the table is just an event. But that food, if it's safe, for example, what is this food, a decaikon? A lot of ingredients are in that decaikon. That makes it very sweet. Now, the first fundamental problem that makes our election not to be free, not to be fair, not to be credible, is not transmission. It is the political culture of the Nigerian man. We have a wrong political culture. Now, for you and Iggy, you guys are journalists. You go to see the end result. You are not opportune to see the back room what happens. More often than not, before election day, you see the impact of it when you see local government election. The results are 90% ready. Not that they've been written down already. But the outcome is pretty timing because the electoral officers, internal officers, coalition officers, they're all, in most cases, party men of one party, either party A or party B. So before they transmit, they will only collate that result and favor them. And the law says that whatever the internal officer declares, it's going to stand, except a court of law says otherwise. Now, when you appoint a man who doesn't have a character integrity to become a head of electoral body, election has failed too. If in a state, you have an INE commissioner who's on the payroll of a government, election has failed. Now, when they come to recruit the ad hoc staff, in most cases, after the 1960s, I can imagine of every state where 90% of the officers are not brought in by political leaders, you get. So, on the view of the election, they're only going... I think we lost time on that. Olalika, would you like to step in? In keeping with what he's saying, many people have advocated for... Nigerians to advocate for making these officers financially less attractive. But it takes me back to the question I asked earlier, how do we do it? Because it's the same guys that have to legislate on it. Yes, sorry, wait. Okay. Is he on? Olalika, okay, let's Olalika come in here. Barista, Tamino, we'll come back to you. Okay, okay. In terms of making the office less attractive, I think it has to be a joint decision, really. It's not going to be the decision of just those who are in political offices and all of that. You probably have to do it with a new set of rules, a new set of laws for everybody or anybody who will occupy a political office in Nigeria. But you can't rely on those who are currently holding offices to make such offices less attractive, except they are saying, we should go back to having an amendment to the constitution of the federal public of Nigeria, or we have a brand new constitution now attractive, which I don't think it's possible at the moment. But what we need to have is to first and foremost be able to elect credible people into offices. And Barista, Tamino Williams was just talking about the processes that lead to an election. We only see the end result of an election day, but we do not see majority of what has gone on one month, two months, three months, even before the election. I'm sure you are aware that several INEP officials have been sent to prison or are currently facing cuts in Nigeria for compromising the election for which they were meant to be an impartial empire. So you begin to understand the processes that have gone on before the election. That's why I say, look, can we get to elect credible people into offices? And I say, look, did the Nigerians have the power, the electorates have the power to change their leaders every four years if they don't perform or if they have not done well in office. That is the day a lot of political office holders will begin to sit up. So say, look, we should reduce the price of offices may not be the appropriate thing to do at the moment. What we need in Nigeria is to have a credible electoral process. Once the electoral process is credible, then it means that we are liberty to be able to choose the leaders we want. And so once we can choose the leaders we want, they now know that Nigerians have the power to change them every four years. So it means they are ready to perform even beyond their own expectation to satisfy the electorate so that they can come back into the office. So at the heart of Nigeria's progress towards any advancement, towards any development, towards any serious progress is credible election. Every country in the world that has been successful that is progressive has had the opportunity to be able to choose those that are credible and those who can perform in office. Right, so Tamina, back to you. And just as you said, at the heart of this also is the people. We the people, I mean, because the electoral process cannot happen on its own, it can't happen in isolation. People make the electoral process in itself. So you have INEC on the one hand, you have the police on the other hand, you have the politicians and you have the voters. And so whether it be INEC, whether it be the police, whether it be politicians, we're all human beings, we're all Nigerians, is it safe to say that we're all part of the problem, the guys who take the bribes, the guys who allow the processes to be rigged, the ones who take the ballot boxes, because sometimes we make it look like it's just the guys who snatch the ballot boxes that are the bad guys. The guys who take the bribes and allow for these ballot boxes to be stopped in the first instance. And even those of us who would sell our consciences because you know we're hungry, we couldn't be bothered, we want to leave for the now. How do we even, where do we even start to you know, clean this erosion of our mentalities as it is, because it looks like it's a deep-seated problem? Now, the solutions, there are many, but the first point is that there must be some level of awareness that look, the road we're going to will lead us to Armageddon. No, that you are dead sure that if you continue like this in the next four years, whether you're a politician, you're a doctor, you're a pastor, even in your church, people cannot bring offering because they don't have any offering to bring to you. So it must get to that dire situation. But there are things that can be done simply. Now, have you ever asked where INEC prints their ballot papers? Do you know where they print them? Do you know who the contractor is? You know, what is the level of security mark on those papers? But we have said, we have demanded that on election day, the results, when they get to every polling unit, the agents have to sign on their results before they start collation, okay? And before that time, all the agents that are going to sign a result, they already had their sample signatures in their party headquarters. So when I say, maybe I vote in polling unit one in Ocraca, my agent signs my result, the result that they're going to use in collating. If you swap it, if you change it, at the point of uploading, we'll object. So that result will be uploaded as result objected but being uploaded. So before you can collate that result, you must clear, confirm that the signatures on it have been issued, you know, is that of a proper agent? I can tell you, all the political parties will not accept that process. You know why? You're going to shoot them in the foot. Now, the second point is this. You know that in every polling unit, there is a number of persons who are registered, not registered in a night place. Now, when you do accreditation, wherever the voting exceeds the number accredited, that result is canceled automatically. So you don't need to go to court. But in our case now, you have one case whereby those that are accredited were 50, but the return is 50,000 persons. Except because it has been announced by the return officer, let it go through. Then the last one, which is very fundamental is that when you are eventually proven to have cheated in an election and you were voted in the occupied office, every cobalt you have earned from the day you assume office to when you leave, you refund it. So that is an inbuilt penal measure. So the moment they get you, they find you that look, you actually came through a reprocess. You lose everything. But under the current law, if you serve three years or four years and they say an election was wrong, then you are wrongly declared. You see, keep your property, your benefit and all that. So the point is that we need to be more innovative. And not just the fact that they're less transmitting. What are you transmitting? The garbage you are transmitting or the one that was prepared in the house you are transmitting, but one that was even uploaded earlier. So I saw me that, look, our political values are bad. That is why even if you bring a pastor to become a NEC commissioner, he would be inundated with overpower. So there has to be a great movement to change this particular trend now. Wow. And on the last note, Olalekum, he talks about orientation, that we need to have a reorientation of sorts and a change of mindsets. But do we wait for the NOA? Do we wait for political parties to teach us voter education? Or do we just wait for the media? What about the conversations we're having on our dinner tables? What conversations are we having in those small gatherings? Shouldn't it start from there? Because we seem to always, you know, justice and responsibilities and leave them at the feet of politicians, these same ones that we're complaining about and mostly government. Well, I'm sure you know that one of the core responsibilities of a political party is also enlightenment, is education, is reorientation. That's one of the core functions of political parties. And you know, but as that terminal Williams mentioned a lot of factors, you also have to look at leadership recruitment by these political parties, you know, in very decent societies, you know, it is the responsibility of the party to look for the best brains, you know, to join their party. How do we recruit leadership even in political parties? You know, these are some of the basic factors that affect the general election. When a political party teaches its members that look, it doesn't matter whether you vote on election day or not, our party is going to win, or it doesn't matter whether you contest the primaries or not, you're already the candidate of the party. So how does the party, you know, preach beyond its own confines and want to preach to the outside world? You know, that's what political parties should be strictly based on subscription. Political parties must ensure that every member of that party contributes to the welfare of that political party. It's not just for one person or two persons or three persons or five persons to come together and hijack, you know, the financial position of the party and put themself to money back. It automatically means that they don't have regards for the rest of members of the party. But if every member, let's say party A, has one million members and they contribute one Naira every month. That's one million Naira every month. So it means that every member of that party would have a say in what happens in that political party. And by extension, we are trying to grow a democratic culture by saying that look, if party A wants to elect a governor and it has 500,000 registered members in that particular state, why can't 500,000 registered members vote for the government candidate of that party online? Political parties begin to encourage their members, teach their members how to do electronic voting. I'm sure you know that political parties are major drivers of democratic culture. So you can imagine party A as means, ways and means of doing electronic voting for each members across Nigeria. Don't you think it would be easier for that political party to preach it to the rest of Nigeria? So say look, in a party, we have been doing electronic voting for the past two, three, four, five, 10 years and it has failed for those. Why can't we extend this to the national level or widespread level, you know, across Nigeria? So it's the responsibility of the party to ensure there's enlightenment, to ensure there's education, to ensure there's orientation and because they must also look for people who are credible to contest on the platform of such political party. Well, we want to thank Tamino Williams, the legal practitioner and we also want to thank Ola Lekon Ighe who's a social commentator. Unfortunately, we were not able to get our other guests online for connection reasons. Thank you so much gentlemen for being part of the conversation. Thank you very much, Michel. All right, well, thank you all for staying with us. We'll take a short break now and when we return, we will discuss the state of the environment in the Niger Delta. Yes, we have to. But then of course, there's politicking to it. We'll be back shortly.