 It's still plus politics, now the Federal High Court in Abuja has set aside the candidacy of Andy Uba as flag bearer of the all-progressive Congress APC in the recent Gov. election held in Anambara state. Judge Inyang Eco, while delivering the judgment, held that Uba was never a candidate in the poll, having emerged from an illegally conducted primary election by the all-progressive Congress. Make war held that the plaintive, Judge Mogalu, succeeded in proving that the APC did not conduct a valid primary election, which Uba claims to have won as the party's flag bearer in the election. The court ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to delete Uba's name from its record as a candidate in the election, and the APC to refund the plaintive 22.5 million Naira that he paid for expression of interest and nomination forms since the party had failed to conduct a valid primary. Now joining us to discuss this in Broglieu is Raymond Kanebehe, is a legal practitioner and of course Mekan Wadyoke, who is also a legal practitioner. Thank you very much gentlemen for joining us. Thank you for having me. Thank you very much. Mr Wadyoke, you obviously were part of the elections in Anambara. You seem to be documenting every step of the way. So it's best to start with you to have this conversation. From the get go, a lot of people had criticized the primaries in the APC. Many people had fingered Uba as not a legit candidate to be even the flag bearer of the APC. I remember speaking with the Information Commissioner from Anambara State, and he was speaking about the fact that nobody had any or showed up in Anambara State to support the Andubar campaign, that they never saw any senior member of the party in Anambara helping him to converse for votes for the election. But looking at what Justice Nyayekul has said, where does this leave the APC and of course the credibility of the party at all levels? Thank you very much. I can assure you it leaves the APC in a very precarious situation, especially as regards its petition at the tribunal, because obviously the courts have jurisdiction, just as the Supreme Court has pronounced several, that the courts have jurisdiction to inquire into the validity of the primaries conducted by the parties, and that the parties have a duty to abide not only by the electoral act, but also by their constitution. And if you look at even the APC constitution, it obviously has very clear provisions as regards conduct of primaries, and you know, specifically you can say that the constitution imbues the process with, you know, internal democracy, but in practice what happened in Anambara just leaves a lot to be desired, because where you see a situation where maybe in fact immediately after the primaries, 11 out of the 14 candidates held a press conference, you know, led by this same Chief George Morland, a gentleman who said, you know, saying that the conduct of the primaries was very questionable, so, and you also see even the leader of the party, so to speak, in the state, you know, Chief Dr. Christensen, who is not only a former governor, but a former senator, a sitting minister, you know, coming to question the primaries conducted in his own backyard, and several also, there were definitely major issues with the... I know that you're not a member of the APC, but I mean, it begs the question, why did the APC allow it to go this far? Because if these people, high-ranking officers within the party, including, you know, the Honourable Minister, that they all came out to, you know, query this process, why did the APC not nibble it in the board? Because these are questions that are begging the answers, and now the APC owes 22.5 million Naira to Mr. Mogaloo, of course, because they call the whole process a sham. I'm sure it will owe a lot of other people, I'm sure it will owe other. I know that for sure Mr. Maxwell Okoye is in court, he's been challenging the process, and several of the candidates may even have to court to claim their 22.5 million. But going back to your question, you recall that the party leadership actually set up a two-man panel headed by the Electoral State of Naira, Mr. Mogaloo, to reconcile the Cudin candidates, but Cudin aspirants, but apparently that did not yield any fruit. So, because again, when you see that the process is fundamentally flawed, what are you reconciling? And you will equally won't worry about the party leadership in both in that process, which was a bloodthirsty rate for democracy really, so to speak, because like I was saying, you have a situation where maybe 230,000 persons we are said to have voted for the candidate, but during the election, it would only pull 43,000, and in fact the entire election, the four major candidates, ABGA, PDP, APC, and YPP, the votes pulled by you know, oppositely pulled by Mr. Bah, only fell short by 379 votes, 380 votes, short of the entire votes that were pulled by the four parties during the election. So you can imagine that I guess a lot of questions need to be answered, but let me come to Raymond. The political pundits are saying that the biggest mistake that Anduba made was to drag out this case of him being that he should have been rightfully the winner of this elections, or that he was one way or the other robbed, that if he had not pursued this, he probably would not be in this position. But let's just examine the personality of Anduba, even before the elections, there were so many issues that arose as his candidates he made news. Well, thank you very much. You know, the man Anduba has been a very, if I had a family, as it has been a very notorious family when it comes to unambiguous politics, and him and his other brother have been at the forefront of these whole issues around the family, the Senators, the Akija Shrine scenario in 2003, how he became the governor of the state for 17 days at some point, and all of that. So he has been, he's a popular, he has a first name recognition in the state, albeit for controversial reasons. So going into the polls, all of those issues were going to come to the backlight, and we saw him struggle with all of this process, even as he also tried to campaign. Talking about the whole primary process and why the party was not able to manage it, I agree with my little friend that it has to do with how the process was fundamentally flawed, so that there was no, it was difficult to actually get warring parties to come to a compromise. So apparently it turned out that since Mr. George Moalu was not going to, was not going to be convinced otherwise, he had to take out that originating summons. And from the word go, I already knew that this judgment was going to be the way it is, because the INEC report of that process dignified it totally. The INEC report said that the election, as it were, did not hold. As at 5.30pm the primary elections had not come in. So it was just that evidence that the federal high court relied upon to say that, well, if INEC, who is a regulator, who was saddled with their role to monitor the process, is saying that we did not see this process play out. That means the process is not, couldn't have taken place. It also makes me go back to the APC at the national level, because we see all of these same kinds of teething problems going on, because we see mostly every time the APC is constituting some committee to reconcile these differences here and there. Why not deal with the processes or the issues at the roots? I mean, deal with the root cause of the problems, instead of having this committee, because we've seen so many of them, but there's one in Akiti, there's one in Quara, River State, I mean, Zamfara, I mean, name them. It has to do with the zero-sum game of politics and politicians being unable to look at the bigger picture, you understand. If you recall what happened in Zamfara State, where the parties had actually won the election, it was just for you to manage that internet division, and it wasn't able to manage it, and it eventually lost the election, actually won. So it has to do with the nature of politics with play, the zero-sum nature of politics, politicians trying to outdo each other by all means. Otherwise, there was a committee that was set up to see how these 14 aspirants in the APC could rally around Mr. Andrew Bant. It was okay, just go. Since at the end of the day, if the party wins, we all win. But they couldn't come to any compromise, and unfortunately for the party, this very difficult situation, the petition it had, it had fight against the victory of Soludo and Abga. I don't, I wonder what is going to be, what is going to happen with it? Well, as we speak, there's a story in the papers about the mockery that the Abga National Chairman was making. Yes, they're making fun of the whole process. But they said they have gone on appeal. They are going to challenge that decision, because if they are not going to challenge the decision, what it means is that Abga could come to the tribunal and say that, well, this petition should be struck out, because the person who seeks to assert a right, he no longer has that right to actually make this claim, since his candidacy has been nullified by a court. But since they are going to go on appeal, I assume they'll get a state of execution of that judgment so that the matter at the tribunal can continue, pay the determination of that appeal. By the end of the day, I hope to be optimistic, to pessimistic, but I don't see the petition yielding any fruit for the party. Let me come back to you by Samadio Cape. It's, when we look at all of these things that are playing out, and it's not that we're trying to put the APC on the chopping board, but they are already on the chopping board for tonight. So let's talk about it. In 2023, we're seeing all of these teaching problems. This doesn't say that the PDP doesn't have its problems. They do have their problems. But if the APC is not unable to have a democratic process within the party in itself, who's to say that they can stand as a formidable force to fight against every other political party they'll be facing in 2023? Yes, definitely. They're going to have major challenges if they don't put their house in order, so to speak, because you keep seeing this issue recurring all over the place. If you look at even the third of cases, you see that it's been kind of recurring decimal. So you are suddenly right that unless they put your house in order, going into, and you just have next year to go into the election, and even, so he is going to pose a major challenge for them. And you also even discover that even by the Supreme Court decision in the Hondo governorship case, even the leadership, the political committee is on which side. So all kinds of legal challenges and problems being thrown at the party. So they really need to put their house in order, in order to be able to have a fighting chance in 2023. Okay. Well, I want to say thank you very much, Rima and Kanibe, and Mekanwadi, okay, our both legal practitioners. Thank you for being part of the conversation. Well, what comes out of the appeal remains to be seen, I guess. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Well, thank you all for staying with us. It's been plus politics. I hope that you enjoyed yourself, leave you with what Nigerians have to say about the presidents rejecting the electoral act amendment bill. And of course, I'll see you tomorrow. I am Mary Anacom. The president is wrong because if it is not direct means they are pushing it. There is something wrong with it. You need to make it a direct primary in such that everybody will participate and a true voting will be met. Because by saying indirect, it means that there is something wrong. And what is wrong is that any election that might be a primary, that primary will give a guidelines on what to do next. But with that primary, what are we doing? Everybody just do anything they like. To me, president, this one is not competent to vote. That's why people are saying, you're asking this question. If it's competent, they will accept it in the house. That is fine. But that's why it's not competent. Today you choose, tomorrow you choose. Here and there. To me. So that's the fact. I don't want to say much on this because Nigeria politics is upside down. Yeah, the reason that the president said there is no go for the direct primary election, because you know, when they say direct at times, some people used to do a round. They will cheat. They will do evils. They will take, they will use the opportunity. They will hijack the agent. They will hijack the agent. They will bribe them and take over. That is why it's better they shall do the right thing so that the things will move forward.