 We're glad to know you're still there, and this is the breakfast on Plus TV Africa. 94% of electoral offices are with tribunal as INEC's credibility sinks. That is the topic of discussion here, and we have us, our guests, Mr. Biodun Shouwami, a political analyst. Good morning and welcome to the program, Mr. Shouwami. Hello, good morning. Okay, good. We're talking INEC, we're talking about the fact that the credibility of this electoral body, according to reports, is sinking lower and lower and lower. According to a report on Guardian yesterday, we have 1,280 offices contested for. And of that number, we have 1,209 in courts. Now, this tells you that 94% of the cases are in court, which means the credibility of INEC is being questioned. Yet INEC holds that they did everything they're supposed to do, and whatever has happened is not their fault. I don't know how we can marry the stance of INEC, and even the Nigerian politicians, who are favored by whatever INEC has done to tell the external bodies and others to stay off Nigeria that we did what we should do, and we did it very well. So now that we have the data, and know that 94% of these cases are in court, what do you make of all these things? Yes, we are practicing presidential democracy, whereby it's winner takes all. And therefore, you have a situation where politicians of all who's and cries are bidding to control the few offices at the level. And once you lose an election, you know, except you challenge it through the legal system, then you'll have to wait for another four years. So one of the factors responsible for the desperation in going to court is simply because of the huge amount of money involved in contesting elections in Nigeria. And because of the enormous resources committed, you are bound to find politicians so desperate to ensure that they're able to scale through in elections. And if they fail, then they start experimenting with other methods of getting into office. And that is exactly what is responsible, you know, for the high number of cases in court. It's not about the conduct of elections, because we are not going to bring in just conduct elections in Nigeria. And that is why in virtually every climate where you have a system of government, the threshold is always substantial compliant with the electoral rules. Basically, that means that they know that big human beings are conduct elections, it may not be perfect. But is it imperfect to the extent that it will bend the election or it will create distortions in terms of results or it will undermine democracy? So as long as you don't have substantial non-compliance, then politicians should accept the value of INEC, the Electoral Commission. But what we have seen over the years is an increase in attacks on INEC integrity. And once we continue to attack the integrity of the Electoral Empire, once results are announced, we are bound to have those who lose elections to have the feel that, look, we need to use the court to examine what has been done by INEC. And that is what we are going through currently. What is alarming is the fact that most politicians that contested the last election are not willing to accept the results of the Empire. Even as we are speaking, the judiciary has also been attacked, you know, that they have to undermine the judiciary. Even though cases are in court, they are yet to know the value. The same politicians have been trying to undermine the integrity of the judiciary. So that tells you is about the presidential system of government, where it is going to take some. My own panacea is that we need to restructure this country, restructure a policy and introduce, go back to, the parliamentary system. Where you would only have a percentage, the percentage of seats on the basis of what percentage of votes you have in any election. And for instance, you cannot have 40% votes and expect to control the whole parliament. You would have to, other parties that's called in 60%, even though they may not have the majority of the votes. But they would have representation in line with the number of votes they have. So you have a situation where the party that's called the IS votes will have to go into an alliance with another party in order to form government. This will ensure that everybody becomes stakeholder in line with the percentage of votes scored. That we won't have a situation where it is not exorbitant. Otherwise, you will ask a question, what happens to the projects, the plans, the programs which those who lost the election would therefore. Does it mean they won't have a voice in government? And other presidential system of government, you don't. It will not take some. It's tyranny of majority rule. And that is why this has to be changed to a parliamentary system. We are everybody who is stakeholders and everybody's voice who counts through their representatives. Well, you seem to place the blame on the politicians more. Right now we're talking about the credibility of INEC or otherwise. Are you saying what they did was right and everything that is playing out is because of, permit the word selfishness of the politicians who want at all costs to be there. OK, this desperation of politicians who want at all costs to be there. Because if the election, like a lot of people are saying, had been as transparent as possible, the litigations would have been less. For instance, I don't know how many people were shouting wolf when the 1993 I think election was done, the option A4. It seemed at that moment it was the most transparent election. And a lot of people were comfortable with it, even though it turned out that that administration never saw the light of day. So don't you think the transparency of INEC would have lent a great hand in we not having to spend so much money in the cuts anymore? Yes, I don't think it's about the transparency of INEC. Because INEC will only be transparent, up to the extent that the electoral acts allow INEC to be. You will realize that the issue of transparency is well addressed in the electoral act. Every single contestant or political aspirant have the right to have an electoral agent. Results will be counted at the polling unit. Results will be issued signed by all the agents of all the contestants at the polling unit. What can be more transparent than that? Because once you do that at the polling unit, INEC cannot announce a different result. Because you have the original result issued at the polling unit to challenge whatever decision or results announced by INEC, which differs from what you have. And that is very clear. The issue of transmission of results, it's a totally different matter. Because the law provides for coalition of results manually. That is the electoral act. INEC could not have done it in any other way. Because it will not be in consonance with the laws, with the electoral act. So INEC did exactly what the electoral act allows them to do, to lay the results manually. And then for ease of transparency, INEC on its own agreed that these results will be posted on its portal. Which is the IRF we are talking about. IRF is not about coalition of results. It's about viewing of results. That is what IRF is about. And the law allows for INEC to do what they have done. So within the context of the electoral act, INEC has acted correctly. What we should be saying is that we need to go back and review the electoral act. If we so desire that results should be deleted electronically. Then we need to review the electoral act and make it mandatory on INEC to ensure that results are deleted electronically. Once we don't do that, once we are not in the electoral act, INEC will be seen to have done what they are supposed to do under the law. Because there is no other way out. The rule of law will have to guide us in this democracy. We cannot do otherwise. And where you have two or more people competing for a particular post, you will always have competing interests and competing claims. The bottom line is for the electoral empire to be seen to be fair and to be fair indeed. And the only way you can ensure that is by complying with the electoral line. So when you look at the cases already decided in court, I think it's only one or two cases that the results declared were made in value due to the fact that it was either due to over-voting or no, sorry, due to the cancellation of results that necessary. In virtually all other cases, it has always been about the pre-qualification to contest that election. Or whether somebody fought for a certificate or one thing or the other. That is what you have. And that is not the responsibility of INEC to ensure that candidates presented by political parties have valid certificates. That is the problem of the political parties which are filled in them. So when you look at the issues disproportionately, you probably will come to the same position like mine. Well, you seem to have vindicated INEC. But when you were talking about agents, something just came to my memory. Something I witnessed as well. There was an administration here in Lagos. It served only one tenor. And when the elections came, and the people were supposed to go to the polls, the election was held and one candidate was supposedly having the upper hand. And then the evening of the election day, everybody was gathered at, I think, Protea Hotel in Ikejian and shown some documents that they were supposed to be signed by agents. And so far, those documents have not been given to any agents because no agent showed up. Even though I was part of a monitoring team that was going around the state and seeing that there were agents in every polling unit and elections were being carried out. But these people came from, that was primary election anyway for a particular political party. So these people came from Abuja as the people sent by the team, the party. And they came and told us that that election was a sham election because nobody came forward for those forms and the election that held was not held, in quote. So they were going to go back to Abuja and then one day soon they are going to announce a date for a real election to take place. That team was led by Clement Ebre of Cross River State. They went to Abuja and the date was not announced. It was the winner of an election that they claimed never happened that was announced. I remember that very well because it never leaves my head. It was Abracadabra. So when you were talking about political agents, that's what I just remembered. But now that's not the issue. The issue is since you have tabled the things that you feel are the problems of an electioneering process, you have profiled some of the solutions. We'd like to have for purpose of emphasis what you think should be done subsequently to make sure that we cut down the number of people that go to the courts to do this. What role INEC can play and what role the people themselves, not politicians now, the people themselves because it's from the people that politicians come can play to make sure that we can do an election and get it done within the same month that we did the elections before we wrap up, please. Yes, the last election, there's no doubt that there are some problems in Lagos, particularly when we had the gubernatorial elections. These problems were widely reported in some parts of Lagos, not in all parts of Lagos state. We should not forget one thing, the issues about such partial compliance. It is also true that it may have been impossible for some candidate agents to be at some holding units where there are problems, so therefore they were not able to sign the results sheets. But the issue is this, in line with the requirements of the electoral act, are those violations, would they constitute substantial compliance, particularly when you have five divisions in Lagos state, which is the Kuru, Epe, Badagri, Ikeja, and Lagos Island? Would they put a problem in one or two constitute substantial compliance? I think that's left for the court to decide. From the judgment of the court of first instance, which is the tribunal of governorship, the courts failed to agree with the petitioners that there was substantial non-congregation. Basically, any position has been adopted. And it is not anyone's fault. It's always about how elections are conducted everywhere. Even in the United States of America, it's about substantial compliance with the electoral laws. Where you have substantial compliance, then the courts are not likely going to agree that to overturn the results of an election. I mean, we saw what happened in Ndarmawa, how an INEC break decided to announce results in a way that did not comply with the electoral act. The INEC chairman did the right thing at that point in time by suspending. And that INEC break today has really moved from office. But the courts are looking into petitions. Thank you for that. Hello? Yes, please wrap up. So the courts are looking into those petitions. We have seen how they have accepted some grounds. And we have also seen how they rejected some. So therefore, except you have substantial non-compliance, that is always the threshold. That is the problem. And that is very, very difficult to prove when it comes to gubernatorial or presidential because you have to prove non-compliance in every polling unit where you are disputing the results. Meanwhile, electoral cases are time bound. You cannot agree the time, you know, for making your presentation to the court because the courts are the only one it is to look into it before the tribunal stands resolved. So that is always the problem. We need to look at our electoral system again. In my view, it's about the political system we are practicing, which is presidential system of government. We will always have these e-cups. We need to change it to parliamentary system of government. Well, we do hope that all stakeholders will be up and doing and make sure that the offices and elections that are coming up will return the confidence that we put on INEG and the political class to do the needful so that we have peace in our society. Thank you so much, Mr. Biodonchou, for coming on the program this morning. Thank you for having me. Mr. Biodonchou, he is a political analyst. He joined us to talk about the fact that reports have gone that 94% of elected offices are with tribunal and INEG's credibility has sunk. We'll take a short break and when we return, we'll look at what the plastics are doing to our environment and how dangerous that can be. Stay with us.