 Politicians may get away with bad governance in Nigeria, says DG Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, EGOSA or SAGE. Tonight on Civic Education, we take a look at the history of governance in Nigeria and the effect on the forthcoming election. And, I will not be demoralized, Peter Obi says, as Do you know who steps down as Director General Obi Dati campaign organization? This is Plus Politics. My name is Nyam Gul Aghajee. The Director General Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Lagos, Professor EGOSA or SAGE, has warned that politicians in the country will continue to get away with bad governance because the electorate had been bought over and consistently sell themselves as commodities during elections. He noted that as long as the nation depends its democracy along such a trajectory, the nation will continue to re-trogress into low levels of development. Adding also that the way to deepen democracy in Nigeria is for all stakeholders to participate and watch those trusted with political power so they can be accountable. We are being joined to discuss this by Adenike Alloba, Program Director and Managing Director, Data Fied. Welcome to the program, Adenike. Thank you very much. It's my pleasure to be here. We also have Mr. Shergoon Shokweton, a political analyst. Glad to have you join us on the program, Mr. Shokweton. Thanks for having me. Good evening, everybody. Okay, let us begin by getting your comments on Osage's submission. Let's start with the ladies. Ladies first, as they say. So, Nike, what's your take on his submission? You know, as difficult a pill as it still is to swallow in terms of how Nigerians are and what has marked or marked our democracy, he's not wrong. He really is not wrong. I mean, I have my thoughts around the answer to that question, to the question or the challenge that he's pointing out, but the reality is, it's not wrong. For as long as people are willing to sell their votes, for as long as people are willing to be bamboozled by politicians, I mean, yes, the national is loud and it's all there and everyone is making a lot of noise about the national, but a lot of things are happening at the sub-national level. A lot of atrocities, a lot of corruption, a lot of governors who pop up every four years, a lot of, I mean, a number of our states don't have local government administrations. So, he's not wrong in saying that for as long as Nigeria remains as is, we may continue to deal with bad governance. We may continue to deal with bad governance. I mean, I read in his comments that he said that Nigeria's, you know, deepening democracy has not translated into development. And essentially, it is because for somehow, I mean, we do know the reasons why and I hope we get to discuss it tonight. Nigerians keep voting in these leaders who do not take the country forward. And so 20 years down the line, democracy, we're holding another elections in less than two months. But, you know, if you speak to a number of people, not a lot of people are hopeful about what the outcome will be in terms of true development for the country. All of the manifestos that are now out north we're standing. So he's not wrong in his assessment of the country and its democracy. Okay, Mr. Shokiton, let me just have your opinion, too, before we move on to other issues. Right. Yeah. His statement is basically just echoing our reality. Our reality is that government officials and governments will continue to get away with new model. As long as we have the depression of democracy that will practice. And, you know, when we even say, like, when he says in his comments that in spite of the deepening of democracy in Nigeria, we do not have a commensurate increase in the delivery of governance to Nigerians, I would even say, you know, how do you measure the deepening of democracy in Nigeria? But a lot of people will tell you that we are still very, very far off from practicing a true democracy, inclusive and representative democracy in this country. And that might be one of the key reasons why you have, you know, the problem that he's pointing at. You know, so for example, what are the measures of democracy? Free, fair, credible elections. And we all know, you know, where we are in that regard, it's been a very, very rough journey. Granted, INEC has made some plans, some conditions over the last couple of elections. And we've seen the introduction of the BVAS, which from the results of the mid-cycle elections, we can say will make a significant difference for the general elections. But we have to see how that will turn out. So there's usually elections, and we all know how voter turnout has been for Nigeria. You know, we've never achieved 40%, for example, as turnout of citizens. If you go to turnout of registered voters, it's a completely different story. It's worse. You know, so then there's usually participation, there's usually freedom of expression. You know, the more you go into those measures of the depth of a democracy, the worse we fare. For example, freedom of expression. We all remember the answers to tobacco and how that ended. And as long as you have a country where citizens are afraid to speak out, where people speak out and get shot, or where people speak out and end up in jail, then you can't have a democracy that delivers governance. And I think that's perhaps one of the biggest challenges, where we really, really need to find a way to improve the entire democratic experience of Nigeria. Until we do that, then we continue to have shadows. Okay, Niki, you spoke something about selecting leaders, and both of you have said something about that. And we're dealing with leaders that do things and get away with it. And we talked about voting the right people into office. But it's a tricky thing, because most of the people that are voted into, at least a lot of them that I know, were very good people, as it were, and they got into office and became something else. Is there something that we're missing? There's things that the citizens need to do. We have town hall meetings. We have other things that we do. Civil society organizations are there to say the things that need to be done and hold the government accountable and all that. Even though the traditional institution has become a political thing, that they can hire and fire. The political class can hire and fire as they like. But we need to know what else, what else we need to do to make sure we deepen this democracy in such a way that instead of the people fearing the people in power, the people in power should be the one afraid of the citizens. So, Nigeria is... So, as soon as I saw this conversation, my mind went straight to the statistics around multidimensional poverty in the country. And it's 133 million Nigerians. And one of the thoughts that troubled me the most about the idea of multidimensional poverty was that the buzzword was everywhere, but people were not quite... I'm not sure people were clear on what it meant. What it meant was that Nigerians were doing an opportunity cost of things like health, things like education, things like feeding. I'll connect it to elections in a minute. Now, when we say, oh, why are you selling your votes? Don't you know that you don't need to sell your votes? We ignore it. And this conversation is heavy in the elite communities. Oh, Nigerians deserve the leaders they have. They're not voting in the right people and things like that. I think that we significantly undermine the impact of such depravity on our people, on ourselves as a country. We undermine the effect it has. We undermine what it will mean, what people will interpret as development. For instance, Zonal Intervention Projects, over the last 20 years of Nigeria's democracy, is still today being celebrated as if some senator has donated something to the community. Now, in your beautiful house where you have your WC and you have all the amenities, it looks like why would you be celebrating a peat toilet? But for people who do not have access to wash services, that's a victory. If that is being sold to them as, hey, don't let anybody deceive you. When you voted me the last time I built a toilet, they're going to believe that we have to be able to connect. And I think this is really important when we're having conversation about how to change, you know, how to change the trajectory of Nigeria's development and democracy, how to change people's voting behaviors essentially. This is what we're saying, how the people can ask the right questions, how the people can have the right conversations, how the people can know the right questions to ask. We have to consider what development really means to a hungry man. If we give some consideration to that, then it allows us to rethink how we engage with the people in the communication of, oh, this is what development should look like. If you consider that the person you're talking to does not have access to the internet. So all of the, you know, buzz that is happening on social media around who to vote for, who not to vote for, what the issues are, they don't have access to that. All they know is this senator came, our governor came, and he made a road into our village. That's the person I'm going to vote for. So when we're having a conversation about how to change voting behavior, we really need to drill down a little more into what is driving voter behavior. What is driving it? And I think a large part, a significant part of what is driving voting behavior is just the amount of deprivation. That is, I mean, today, inflation is not only in the double digits, but it has risen consecutively for the last 10 months. Now, if some governor or some person, some senator or some governor, whoever it is, and I'm very deliberate about using senator and governor and House of Reps members because governance is not just the president. And I think that's another conversation we need to have and have and have. Don't just focus on who is going to become the president. Your governor is important. Your local government chairman is important. When that guy comes around and says, oh, yeah, don't worry, you know, and distribute bags of rice. Today, even local rice is selling higher than $30,000 higher. So to engage the conversation of what needs to change, what the people need to do differently, we really do need to understand what is driving the behavior of voting and then communicate in that language. And one thing that in the last couple of months, you know, sitting on my chair as a managing editor and reviewing stories and people's angles and reading everybody's work, one thing that is clear to me is it's going to take time. And we can't pop out of the woodwork every four years to say, Nigerians, you have to vote better. No, it can be every time an election is just around the corner that we then begin to make statements like, oh, we are the reason we have bad governance. We've got to keep talking about these things. I mean, there's no vacuum. We shouldn't have a four-year gap in which there's no voter education happening. There's no civic education happening. And then once it's two months to the elections, we all pop out of our woodwork. My experience is that when we go especially to localities to tell them that, hey, guys, this is what you should focus on, they trust us even less than the politicians who come and distribute 2,000 IR. Because this is what they tell you. Four years ago, you came here, you told us not to do this, you told us not to... And you disappeared. We never heard from you again. Now you are back here again. Who is paying you? That's the reality. And so we have to give a lot of thought to what is driving people's voting behaviour and why we are choosing these leaders that we seem to be choosing and then deal with that problem, not from an elitist point of view of, oh, what's wrong with people. And I'm repeating this because I've heard that said a lot. Nigerians, Nigerians, they're just... Nigerians are bad, they're just choosing bad leaders. If we're going to turn things around, we need to be a lot more deliberate. We need to be a lot more calculated about changing people's voting behaviour. Okay. Mr. Sherporton, you said something about the voting strength of Nigeria in all elections has always been like 40% or a little above that. And whether it is 20% or 40% leaders still get elected into office. And let's look at that as the deal is done. Now, beyond voting these people into office, holding them accountable is the real crux of the matter. It's as if when they go there, they have the free hand to do whatever they want to do. And that's why my concern was when I asked the question that we have town hall meetings and we have civil societies talking, but it seems not to be enough. What else do we need to add? Because even they talk about people being poor, much as that might be true, I've seen societies where they don't lack food, at least food. But when you go there on an election day, you give 100 naira, you give 500 naira, they sell their vote and they're just saying, this is what I can see from government, let me just take it. They do whatever you have asked them to do and they don't care about it. Now, what do we do beyond the election? That is one of them. Let us know whether these voices coming from civil societies, town hall meetings and every other places that we have been using to talk are not enough. What else do we need to do? Well, okay, so thank you. I think you are speaking to a wider aspect of the conversation. Because like I said before, the first thing that we need to do is to perhaps disaggregate what exactly we mean by democracy and what that is supposed to do for people. When we say we are running democracy in Nigeria, what exactly do we mean? Are we running the democracy? Because having elections in itself, it is not necessarily an indication that you have democracy. They have some sort of elections in China. In fact, I think they have some sort of elections in North Korea. So having just elections in themselves do not necessarily give you the democratic environment within which you can then hold politicians accountable as is the conversation, the subject of the conversation we are having this evening. It goes way beyond that. So the first part is the elections and they are very, very important because that's how these politicians emerge and that's how they get access to political office. But beyond that, we need to look at the other things that has to happen. So different organizations and agencies around the world have different ways of framing the question of how to measure the depth or the quality of democracy. So for example, the Economic Intelligence Unit, the Economist Intelligence Unit, talks about elections, participation, functioning of government itself, political culture, civil liberties. Freedom House, which is another very, very well used measure of the depth of the democracy, talks about elections, talks about participation as well, talks about functioning of government as well but then looks at the rule of law, looks at organizational rights and stuff like that and then individual rights. If we look at these things and then, like Biola said, one of the things, one of the biggest mistakes that the country, our society makes is the entire democratic experience has been reduced to a four-year election cycle and as long as we keep doing that, when already, when already for development, we have to ensure that the conversation, so the elections will come every four years, the general election, whatever election it is by a constitution is four years except for the local government elections that are three years and we all know how that goes. In most places, they don't even happen at all and where they do, the end of those exercises, I won't call them elections, would have been determined in somebody's bedroom before the activity actually goes ahead. So going beyond the elections, which is where the majority of people will participate by exercising their franchise to determine who rules them or who governs them or who runs their lives and determine the policies that affect them on a day-to-day basis. The other parts of democracy still need to be different. We need to have this, you know, this idea of, for example, the active and engaged citizen is such a key part of the democratic experience and I always like to say that you can't look anywhere in the world where democracy is delivering good governance and not see a country or a society where citizens are actively engaged in the governance process. So engagement in what terms? Engagement in terms of asking questions. Engagement in terms of demanding accountability on a consistent and systematic basis, you know. Engagement in terms of protests, you know, and all of that. We need a lot of these things to happen consistently in our society beyond the four-year cycle before we can begin to talk about how to get democracy or the politicians to deliver good governance, you know. So the Convention must continue along those lines. How do we get civil society? And remember, when it comes to elections, that's where you have the largest levels of participation. But the moment you move into those other areas of engagement and involvement, the number of people that can participate are fewer. And the number of people that can participate really will be the segment of society that should be able to do so, which is the middle-class elite, you know. The people that Berlin refers to as talking about, you know, Nigeria getting the leaders that we deserve and all of that. The truth is that there's so much more that we can do, and not minding and notwithstanding the fact that our governments are very repressive. Till today, our governments are repressive, you know. They've enacted laws, for example, like the Cyber Crime Act that talks about, you know, there are so many people that have been jailed in this country, as I speak today. Journalists that have been jailed for heckling government officials, simply for, they call it bullying. Like, I write a story that a governor issued a contract to his nephew and has done so repeatedly for four years. And then I get picked up by DSS or the police and I get put in jail. And I even get taken to court and sentenced. You know, in this country, Nigeria, you know, that's happening. So all of these things need to be looked into, and we need to develop a space where conversations can be heard freely, without fear, so that we can then begin to hold our elected officials more accountable than what we have now. Very, very, very important. Let me come to you, Nikke, very briefly now. Do you think we have any lessons that we have taken or we are going to take, or we should take into 2023, from previous elections that we have held in this country? What are those things we should be looking at as we go into 2023? Things we need to take from history, as it were, and make 2023 a better election year and Nigeria a better country beyond 2023? Thank you very much. I think it's important that we all remember that it can actually get worse. And I don't want to be an alarmist. I don't want people to panic. But where we are today should be a reminder that this is not, you know how people kind of say the national key cannot end. It cannot finish, you know. But even talking strictly about national key in terms of money, the reserves are depleted. Nigeria is not able to turn around resources from its crude oil sales. Inflation is where it is. Double digits, 24, about 24% in November. Things can actually get worse. Insecurity is higher. And I know that it feels like, oh, don't you want to draw lessons like things that are positive? But I think where we are as a country today, I think it's important to... And I love the fact that Mr. Shokwita talked about, you know, the elite, the middle class. Because I feel like there's a bit of a, you know, almost like we're divorcing ourselves from the result of what we're seeing as Nigeria today. Almost like, you know, it's those people. They voted those people in. But I totally agree with him that we have a responsibility. Those of us who have access, those of us who know, who can spout data like this? Who can say, oh, yeah, this is what happened in 1994. There are people who don't know and we have a responsibility to them. And I think that we need to remember that national cake can end. Things can get worse. Today, for someone to travel, intra, you know, Nigeria travel from Abuja to Kaduna, from Lagos to Abel Guza, has become a prayer point, has become a thing where you inform everybody else and everybody's worrying and checking on you. I think it is important for us to remember that the decision we're about to make in two, less than two months is fulcrumic. It's very important. I don't know. I wish I had something positive to say, you know, like, you know, if we did this, we will get this. But I think it's important for us to remember that it can get worse. And we have to be that aware. And that has to drive our decision-making, the kind of conversations we have around these elections. Yeah. Well, it's still positive, reminding the people that Safa never do. That's how we say it in Nigeria. And if you say that and somebody has it in mind, maybe it will inform our choices in 2023. Let's wrap up with you, Mr. Chopiton, your final word to Nigerians. Like Nikke said, she doesn't want to be an alarmist. And even in spite of all the things that we are looking at now, there's still hope for Nigeria. So what do you have to say to the people before we wrap up? Well, I think that's where we are. That's where we are at today. We should be alarmists. Because things are bad. So I don't know why Nikke doesn't want to be an alarmist. I think it should be. Let's get people to realize that this is where facing an existential threat. And if things continue on this trajectory, Sam, Ma, Nigerians, hear this well, if things continue on this trajectory, you might not have a country in five, ten years. I mean, it's just the reality. And I'm even being very conservative in saying five, ten years. It could be quicker than that. So 2023 is a watershed moment for us. We cannot, we must not get it wrong. If we get 2023 wrong, well, you know, you never can tell anything can happen. We hope that whatever the outcome of the elections, the country continues to charge along as we have done over the decades. But, you know, there is always a breaking point. So my word, my final word to people is vote. Vote your conscience in 2023. Vote with your brain. Vote with your eyes wide awake. Look at people that are in front of you and make sure that your choice makes sense, logically, not emotionally, not tribe, not religion, not any of this, you know, very funny mundane considerations we always eventually fall back to that if politicians always drive us towards. Vote with your brain and your eyes wide open. Otherwise, we will hear our own. Okay, what a way to end this segment. Thank you so much, Mr. Chopra. Time for coming on the program and also Denike for being a wonderful light to this discussion. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, for the rest of us, thank you for staying with us. We take a short break now. When we return, we will be looking at our last discussion on the resignation of the DG of the Obidati Campaign Council and Peter Obi's reaction to it. Stay with us.