 Welcome back to the run-up. Well, the president-elect, Bola Tinubu, has extended an olive branch to fellow contestants of the PDP, Atiku Obuboka and Peter Obie of the Labour Party and others to join him as a team in making Nigeria a great nation. Tinubu made a call in his acceptance speech after he was declared winner of Saturday's presidential election by the chairman of the Independent Electoral, National Electoral Commission, Aina Mahngudyakubu. Tinubu polled 8,794,726 votes and won in 12 states to beat Alhaji Atiku Obuboka of the PDP, who came second with 6,984,520 votes and also won in 12 states. The Labour Party candidate Peter Obie polled 6,101,533 votes to place a close third. He also won 11 states and the FCT. Former governor of Kano State and New Nigeria People's Party, the NNPP candidate Senator Rabiu Kwon-Kwasew, came fourth with 1,496,687 votes. Joining us to discuss the 2023 outcome of the presidential elections are our guests are Kabiru Sophie, a public affairs analyst. He teaches political science at the Kano State College of Education and Preminary Studies. Hello. Thank you for having me on the program. All right. We also have Vincent Isian, a member of the APC Presidential Campaign Council. He's a professional forum. He is a lawyer and joins us from Aqaibom State. Hello, Vincent. Thank you for having me here on the program. It's a pleasure. Congratulations to Nigerians. It's a great day. Thank you very much. Aranyamgo, perhaps we should start with Vincent because it's their moment. Vincent, it's your moment. You're already basking in the excitement and we understand that. But tell us, what's your assessment of how things played out on the 25th? Well, I'll say once again Nigeria has chosen to ensure that the official democracy is sustained. It was a very tough campaign. It went, probably according to our projections, but it was a tough campaign in spite of attempts by some, so attempts were made by some anti-democratic elements. But the key thing is Nigerians can vote to sustain our democracy. And it's also, we feel good as the APC that Nigerians have decided to continue to entrust their mandates with us. We think we're the best party to sustain this sure democracy and to sustain and to improve on the positive foundations that have already been laid in our, where we're running out of second term. Of course, there are areas that we need to think high in as we come as we run into the new administration. And fortunately, we have also selected, in my view, a candidate and the capacity to deliver the expectations of Nigerians. We thank all Nigerians for putting their trust in the APC. We commend the other parties, especially the PDP, the Labour Party, and even the NNPP and even the other 14 other parties. We are a victory as well to the other parties in many ways. We don't need to say that. So we thank them and we ask them to continue to believe in the institution of democracy. That's democracy in action. You don't win today, you probably win tomorrow. And besides, everybody is a winner. There's still a role. Black countries have said they've invited them to come and join in the process of building Nigeria, taking Nigeria to the level so that we can actually have a nation, a Black African nation that the globe, the whole world is waiting for. And it has to be Nigeria. There can be no other country. And I'm confident that we are sewerable and continue to start to feed our expectations. Well, Kaviru, do you share the same sentiments with Vincent? Well, he gave us almost like another acceptance speech he's basking in the moment. I quite understand that. But do you share the same sentiments? Do you think what went down and culminated in the announcement of the APC presidential candidate is something worth applauding? Yes, I think I agree with him right from the beginning where he mentioned the challenges of his party, I mean, in the context. It was a very tough battle for them, especially considering the fact that many people were skeptical of the ticket even flying through the same fit ticket. And some people wanted to play the religious card against the ticket. And then secondly, of course, they are the infighting that we have seen within APC, the accusations from the presidential candidate on sabotage within the party, especially his and what has you. But despite that, the party got much victorious. So I think yes, about the challenges he has rightly mentioned. And of course, it was a very keen contest. Nobody thought that the Labour Party would beat the APC in Leblos and that helped too. So it was really a very interesting scenario for the elections. It makes the election more acceptable despite the rejection of the process by some party agents. And then we must commend also the what's the announcement of the final results when they reached out to the very soul. Something good from the acceptance speech of Ashwajibullah Ahmad. Kaviru, you have to look around you, maybe there's something that is obstructing your audio at some point, at definite points, we're losing your audio and then it's coming back maybe in a matter of seconds. So look around you, something that might be obstructing your audio. Good thing we still have Vincent, whose audio is clear. So Vincent, we cannot overlook the fact that these elections were seriously marred with controversies. And even the international community, the EU inclusive, have cast passions, they've declared it to be very short of expectations, especially of that of Nigerians. How do you respond to that? I'd like to say that the views of the international observers are still being collated. We are not an observer of the election. But what I'd say is that this election, in my view, seems to be probably one of the most credible elections we have had. And I'll say this especially because of the introduction with the signing of the electoral act, which was done by a president. And that was an important innovation, which brought about a few noble processes in the electoral process, especially the beavers. What we'll see also show that the beavers have actually introduced a lot of credibility in terms of the overall voter turnout. You see that? You talk about credibility. Sorry, I have to cut in here because you talk about credibility, saying the beavers has brought in credibility, but the beavers, the inability or refusal of the INEC officials to use the beavers, which was the main reason why most Nigerians came out on the 25th of February to vote, is a major reason why this election has been questioned. And so for you to be ascribing victory to the beavers or credit to the beavers is getting me a little bit confused. No, it's not because the most important thing I can say is that, first of all, the Nigerians came out to vote because of the renewed interest in the electoral process. Nigerians are actually demanding for those in government to be more responsive to their needs. That's the first thing. And the beavers actually are the primary function. It's actually the biometric voter accreditation system. The most important function of the beavers is voter accreditation. And that has shown true. You see, for instance, in my unit in Fibrom, where we generally have a voter report of about 500 to 600, for the first time in this election, we had a voter report of about 250. That I totally give credit to the beavers. And that you could see that trend running all through Legos for the states that just have 2 million voters. And that's the picture that people are not taking account of. Before the election, we actually asked for the report of collected voters cards. And for instance, in Legos, we have 6 million voters cards. But the figures for people who actually voted is about 1.5. So we are demanding 4.5 voters card that we're collecting. It's a figure. It starts something that we need to start to interrogate. And the people are describing a lot of ratio to not a secondary function of beavers, which is the fact that you can use visa cards to scan results and send to the INX server. That is a secondary function. It's not the primary function of the machine itself. And so that's why I say that machine is actually introducing a lot of credibility to the voter report from the units which are now collated and to these words, local government states. That is the big clause that I've seen that people are missing the point of. Because a lot of people are focusing, well, for whatever reasons, on the fact that they thought that beavers were just, that's a secondary function of beavers. And I think it succeeded. So I think that we need to wait for the final report of the observers. Of course, there were incidents of violence and all that. Nobody's going to deny that. And nobody supports that. And definitely the law enforcement agencies to do what they need to do. INEP also has a part to review the process, like everybody knows, under electoral act. And they're probably going to look at that. So anybody who has complaints, whatever parties, whatever institutions, whatever agents have parties, should go by the book and make whatever complaints they have. And I can look at it. And eventually, of course, we can still go back to our legal approach, which is a very institution that is well regarded and has shown capacity to ensure that the will of who is respected, I have no doubt that anybody who is by the course will know. But I think that this election, it might be, when everybody cools down and reduces it, this election has actually set a lot of marks that we should start to review. Okay. Thank you, ASEAN. I would have loved to stay with you, but let me go to Kabiru, hoping that his audio has improved now. Kabiru, are you there? Yeah, I'm here with you. Let me just take what ASEAN has said. I didn't understand what he meant by secondary function, because that's why I would have wanted to stay with him. But since you can also share your own perspective to this issue, let me just ask you, Bivas, we were made to understand that it can do a lot of things. It can multitask. Not really. It has so many functions. It will aid us in the accreditation process, and it also will upload the results. He kept saying a secondary function. And I was thinking about my phone, like, okay, the phone is for making of calls. And then you're now telling me that because a text message is a secondary function, when I send a text message, I can now resort to say, okay, copy it out, because that's what exactly happened in this thing. There was the ability by the Bivas to upload results. But now they kept telling us that it has to go to the local government before it passes to the state and then to the National Collation Center, and we're asking ourselves why. And then they brought the manual one. So it's like sending a text message and someone on the other side copies it out before forwarding it to where it should go. It makes no sense to ask. So what is your own perspective to this discussion about Bivas having accreditation as a primary function and having the uploading of results? He said scanning and uploading. The uploading of results as a secondary function. Will you take that as a good enough excuse to say that the election was free and fair? Well, I think this explanation of it being a primary or secondary may likely come from INIC. I expect it to come from INIC because INIC had admitted the thought that Bivas was used for accreditation and it was used to upload results like you rightly mentioned to local government and to state level. I think where everything felt is where the result was uploaded from the states to the National Collation Center. And I think that was what was challenged by the agents of the political parties that worked out of the National Collation Center. So I think ideally what should have been done was the same way it was uploaded and sent to the local government then electronically should be sent to the state and electronically it can be sent to the National Collation Center. Even if something is going to be brought manually then at least let it be done simultaneously at the same time. And then when that fell the next thing to do is to see whether there are discrepancies between what was announced in the states and what was announced in the National Collation Center. And if there are no discrepancies then I think it may not really challenge the validity of the results. It depends on the lawyer and he knows the legal aspect of it. So I think if there are no discrepancies but definitely initially what everybody thought based on the promises of INEC was that these results will be transmitted electronically from various levels up to the National Collation Center and that was done up to state level but then from the state level then it was done manually to the National Collation Center. And I think that is where an adherence demanded an explanation and that is where the political parties to even had to stage a workout. But then like I mentioned earlier on the results went ahead and it was announced. And I think like the presidential elect setting is on acceptance speech that if there are legal issues it is expected that the political parties can go to court and challenge the legality of the process. But even it being primary or secondary I think that should come from INEC and then if that is challenging the court will be made to understand whether it is really primary or secondary. But Nigerians based on the promises of INEC expected that these results will be transmitted the local government and from the local government to the states and then from the states to the National Collation Center electronically and that simply did not happen. So Vincent let me come back to you and being a lawyer I'd like to ask you what should be done to INEC because INEC obviously has some questions to answer and explanations to give. First a major reason why a large turnout was witnessed on Saturday was because of INEC's promise. I remember my children would say to me mommy a promise is a debt. INEC told Nigerians that the elections would be electronically transmitted the result and we know that result is the name of the game whether you call it primary function or secondary function Nigerians were assured that whatever they cast are the polling units who will be transmitted through the beavers to the IRA and that gave Nigerians the hope that okay this time around the courts will not decide this time around it's not going to be a case of who rigs the most winning it's going to be our votes counting. Now the inability or refusal of INEC officials to upload through the beavers broke the hearts of Nigerians and that changed the narrative. What should Nigerians be doing with INEC at this point in time? First of all INEC has and I haven't seen except I missed the broadcast INEC giving any form of apology to us as to the reasons why their promise was not kept. So first of all from the legal angle what should Nigerians and what can Nigerians do to INEC? Well first of all I have to speak for INEC you know I can only speak for my party. Now I wanted to speak as a lawyer this time. Speak for Nigerians. Speak for Nigerians as a lawyer. What I would say is that I'm going to give curious to INEC for what I think is the major statistic on the table and people sometimes miss points. There are 176,800 polling units in Nigeria and what INEC said by the regulations is that like I said the beavers has a scanner which is first of all used for scanning facial recognition where fingerprints fail. That's primary photo scanner but that scanner can also be used to scan the results directly to the INEC server. That's my understanding and after that we talk about irony. So what I see is this but there's all what is important is that there's a process for collision. Collision happens at the world local government estate. Collision is actually a process of verifying that what was done at the unit is in compliance with law and it's an important process and there's a reason why it is there. And so INEC understand that every time I hear the INEC chairman speak he keeps saying that the process as we speak I've gone to IRF. I think they have polluted about 180,000 results from polling units. In four days we're just having a bit of audience. Even when we compare it to results in the United States. Results in the United States we're still coming on for five days and we're here. Can I rephrase this? Excuse me Vincent. Can I rephrase this? It takes two days so I think we should be fair and understand. And Vincent just just a moment just a moment Vincent. I understand what you're saying and how you're saying it. The question is Nigerians because they say justice should not only be done but should be perceived as being done. So Nigerians are perceiving that they've been shortchanged by the actions of INEC. Now if you were to advise that's what Moran was asking you. If you were to advise the Nigerian populace on the steps to take to get the answers they need to get from INEC. What should they do? We're not saying what INEC has done right or wrong but the way Nigerians are perceiving it may not be the way INEC is seeing it. So they owe us an explanation. How do we go about it to get that explanation? What I would say is this every Nigerian who voted right every Nigerian who voted also had the opportunity to see the results from the only units. You probably did see the results of only units. You could actually take a picture of it. If you go to IRA and you just go with an open platform we can actually go to view the result of your unit whether it's the same. Now if there is any alteration there must be a reason and I don't think that that is the case in a lot of situations. People I don't say that they want to have an interview. But that has been proven to be the case and they may see their results. So that's been a lot. Just like when they after they didn't see it. So go and check first of all and verify whether the results of your polling unit is the same as the one that was signed after conclusion of voting. That is when you start to make the argument. So like I said maybe there's no argument but they should accept the results. That's my view. Yeah Vincent speaking strictly as a Nigerian speaking strictly as a journalist without bias. We are working with facts. We are working with the things we are seeing and we've seen videos. We've seen pictures. We've seen we've seen evidence that well this is not a court but we're working with some of the things we've seen where we've seen tippets being used to cancel results at polling units. We've seen all of that. We've seen people presenting their results saying it's different from what they are seeing uploaded. And that is why it was so crucial that these results were uploaded at the polling unit to avoid a city because what Nigerians want it's not about APC, LP, PDP, whatever party. It's about the system working. It's about the system working. We want a system that we can trust that if you lose you lost squarely. You lost fairly. If you win you won fairly and squarely. So that is what this is about. It's about a system that works so that even the next because people are saying that the major reason we saw pictures and videos where even a polling unit very close to mine you could see the reluctance on the part of the staff to upload. The person behind her behind him was saying you were putting the wrong code so it's not going to work. And at that point people got agitated and almost beat him up. So we're talking about things we saw. And that's why I said INEC owes Nigerians an explanation because we were hopeful of a system that we could trust. I think INEC would give an explanation. Like I said I've seen the response of the INEC Chairman to a lot of the arguments even at the National Coalition Center. So I'm sure that that's the capacity to give that explanation. And like I said the law actually makes provision for him to review where anybody calls for a review of any results it may. The law gives that opportunity within seven days. And for those circumstances I don't really want to go into that but I can't speak for INEC. But I think they are they understand their processes and they keep emphasizing that there is a process. There is a process that needs to be done even with dealing with the results that have been uploaded. So I think I mean prior to upload even. So I think that they probably have their own process which I cannot speak about. But I'm sure that they have an explanation to give when they are called to give an explanation. But again let's not try to change the entire process. Because I'm sure that whatever complains whatever what's the margin what you respect. And the only issue of the upload or real-time upload is just one factor. There are other things that happen in the election that could have influenced the whole oppression. How the logistics happened, got there on time, network. So that intimidation, pressure. Don't forget that I saw many of this agents, these polling agents, these are youth corpus, young people who are sharing their country with under extreme pressure. So I mean people really need to be considered. And like I said we are building a process. Democracy is not the bus stop, it's a journey and we are heading somewhere. I think we have to understand that we must take the wins, the step by step wins and build upon their future. Thank you. Thank you Vincent. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I suspect that you get it right 100% at the first bite. I think it's a bit of a mess. Okay thank you. I don't know maybe Ineq can never go wrong with you but we were expecting we were not expecting you, we were not expecting you to talk for Ineq, we were expecting you to talk for the common man just as a lawyer. But let me go to Cabiru. Be careful. Yeah I know, I know that too. Let me go to Cabiru now. We don't have much time but I'd just like you to as much as possible, as quickly as possible respond to this Cabiru. We had an electoral act which everybody thought was the game changer. That was the one that also brought the beavers. And that was the one that gave some other guidelines for someone to be qualified to contest an election. And then we have the judiciary. Now all of them, these are coming together because of what I'm going to give as an analogy. We go up not to Yobes state where the sitting Speaker, President of the Senate came from wherever he came from and became the candidate, the senatorial candidate for that, a senatorial district. We also have from Aqaibon state where the governor, former governor of Gotswila Aqabiu came from nowhere, that's what I will say, to become the candidate for that senatorial district. In spite of the provisions of this electoral act, in spite of what we hope the beavers will give us, in spite of what we felt the judiciary, the kind of role that will play to make sure this electoral act is followed to the letter. Now do you still believe that the electoral act has performed anything significant in this election that has just been concluded? Well, yes, I think I will agree with Vincent that it is a process and we have made a headway. The problem you have cited, all the examples you have cited of the Senate president, Gotswila Aqabiu and others, I think you can ascribe it to the judiciary. But even that you can see like that of the Senate president, it was just a majority judgment. There was still the minority judgment there and you can read it and see. So each one of the two sides have presented the reasons why they have taken the decisions they have taken. So I think there is not much of a problem with the electoral act except if you are trying to say that we should not accept the judiciary, the Supreme Court as a final, having the final say in determining who flies the ticket when I think that will be taken as part. So the electoral act has done well and the beavers has really, we have tried it. What I had expected with the beavers was we could have made a lot of trials so that INEC has offered excuses as to why real-time that the results will not be uploaded to the national level. But I had expected us to make a trial and to see, like Vincent has said, over 170,000 polling units, we could have made a trial and if there were challenges, all those things would have been overcome before we come to the final process. But like Marin has slightly said, we expect, apart from the explanations and apology where there is a failure, but then the electoral act has done well and the beavers have added a little credibility to the electoral process and we can now take a look back and see areas that need to be improved, then we can improve on that. It is really a process and but I think we went into this election with a lot of hope and in some cases these hopes were dashed. The logistics issues alone are enough to have, I mean, surprise Nigerians despite the chest beating and of course the assurances of INEC are still, we have some places where by 12 pm there were no electoral materials and then in a lot of places elections have to hold on Sunday against the normal processes. So yes, there should be some explanations, there should be some apologies, but I believe we have made some progress. Thank you. Thank you. We're sorry we don't have much time but we'd just like to thank you and hope that this conversation, if we have anything else to ask, we can also contact you and make sure we unravel all the things that need unraveling and explanations where we need the explanations. Thank you gentlemen for coming. Thank you very much. Vincent and Kabiru, thank you for coming on the show. Thank you very much. Congratulations to you. Congratulations to you based on ACN and the APC family. Congratulations. Well, ladies and gentlemen, we take a break for the news and we'll return on the other side to conclude the program. Stay with us.