 Nigeria is preparing for elections in an atmosphere of worsening insecurity, which stirs the political actors and ordinary citizens in the face. The Independence National Electoral Commission, INEC, is ready. The parties are ready, or getting set, but the environment is not at peace. The climate is cloudy, particularly in the North West, the North East, and the South East, which areas are battling with a cure-sit at home and eternal strife. Based on INEC's calendar, party primaries are to be concluded by June 3. Efforts to get INEC to change their stance has proven abortive. Hence, we can conclude that this month of May would be a decider for many presidential hopefuls and aspirants for other elected officers. Based on my last count, close to 30 aspirants have purchased the presidential tickets for the ruling APC party, having paid the outrageous ticket fee of 100 million Naira. The main opposition party, PDP on the other hand, has screened 17 presidential hopefuls. There is a resolve on every part of many people to get tickets for this presidential contest. It is important that we remember that our current economic and societal issues are results of our decisions at successive polls. The candidates presented at the general elections are results of the primaries. Hence, we need to understand how the primaries work in Nigeria. The Electoral Act provides that candidates for whatever public office can be elected by indirect primary, direct primary or through consensus method. In these forthcoming elections, the two main political parties are going to pick their presidential candidates using the indirect primary method. And delegates are the ultimate deciders. There are two types of delegates, the ad hoc and the statutory. The ad hoc delegates are picked by holding congresses in the words across the country. Statutory delegates, a recent provision of the Media Electoral Act, are party members who have held public offices before. So you mean people like governors, ex-governors and presidents and likes. This amendment might be out of selfish interests of politicians or otherwise, only time will tell. However, what we can say is that there would be more people to decide the buffet that will be served to Nigerians in 2023. After the delegates are selected, a convention will be held to enable them to decide on who will fly the party's gubernatorial or presidential flags. Although there's a limit to what we the public can do at this point with regards to the primaries, I would encourage everyone who has access to either the ad hoc or statutory delegates to advise, encourage, present them, whatever method you can do to encourage them to choose candidates at the primaries in which would be in the interest of a good nation. The offers from candidates might be tempting, but let's remember that the destiny of Nigeria and its people is dependent on their choices. We can become a better nation based on their decisions. We can also even become a worse nation that we currently are based on their decisions. So therefore, the destiny of 120 million Nigerians are in their hands. So guys, what do you think? How can we, or rather 200 million rather, how can we encourage delegates or to bring forward the right candidates? So who are these delegates? So statutory delegates are ex-presidents or ex-public office holders or even current public office holders, but you then have ad hoc delegates that are usually selected to reconvention, so yes. And oftentimes these delegates are even being bright. Of course. Recently I saw a post where he said, is it actually what people are meant to be secured over 370 delegates? So I ask, secure the word sense. Is it that I don't want to go into the details of that, but I hope the processes are fair. I hope they are fair. They should think about the future of the country. So any political party now that wants to come, because this weekend, I think the election should be this weekend, right? So by Monday we know the primary election. Yes. So I just pray these parties, they will do the right thing. I hope so. I just pray and hope so. Why do I think that it's almost like, let me even use the, I don't like to say the word ruling, just looks too tyrannic, you know, the leading party. I think leadership is more better than rulership. So let's just say the leading party, APC, right? You know, why are there so many people that almost looks like those that can potentially become president? Does it, I mean, somewhere I'm thinking, do they already know the result of the primaries? So this is the corruption we keep talking about. So what is it? So why are the sham, why are the whole person coming out and running? You don't even know the joker that will come out tomorrow and say, I've bought the phone, you know. So they somehow know the result of the primaries who is going to come out. I mean, we have Jagaban already, you know, still in the race. So I'm just looking at this whole thing. So what's the essence? Is it even credible? If the primaries is not even credible. So what is the credibility of the many elections? So that's what's been on my heart to really contain this whole thing. Do you think about the primaries? Why personally think that there's an element of corruption in the primaries? Because we see even at the local government levels, even at the very low level, you see that in your small community, in your local government, your small community, you just ask one or two people, they're already like, oh, that lady is the one that will emerge. They've not had the primaries yet. That lady is the one that will emerge. She's the sister to the former, one of the, you know, she has that connection. So, you know, you can just appear from the blues, you know. So I think that the process should actually be free, should be fair. I was encouraged when I saw a lady, I think Quora State, she's a very young lady. She picked up a form yesterday or two days ago. And a lot of people on Twitter started to speak to her, oh, where did you get money for the form? Where did you get money for the form? Oh, who are you? Who is your father? That was the question on Twitter. And she's a young girl, I think she's in her 20s. Yeah, she's in her 20s and people said, this form is two million dollars. Where did you get the money? Who is your father? That was the question on Twitter. Who is your father? So now we need to ask ourselves, what is she have been saving this morning, saving money, seeking support from uncles and aunts, that she wants to do this? This is her dream. She wants to be a change agent, you know. But you know, that's precedence. We need to work on ourselves as Nigerians and begin to do things the right way. Every Nigerian and any Nigerian has the right to contest if he or she fits in. And let me even use the opportunity to address this issue now. By extension, look at what is happening in the state now. The governor, the incumbent governor is contesting and there is another woman in the party that's contesting. Recently there have been some kind of friction between both sides. They are both members of this empathy. So the fact that somebody is coming outside to contest is not your enemy. So you should not send talks after a political aspirant should not send talk after another one. He's so barbaric. What are you scared of? What are you scared of? Why don't you allow the masses decide? So I'm using this as an extension. If you know you're a politician, a governor, whatever you are, and you are sending talks after all that can be done, she's on you. So what do you think? How can we take our primary seriously? I mean, the description that I just gave is quite instructive. You know, the fact that there is a lot of delegates, you know, I've never heard that before. It just shows how politically ignorant most people are. And I want to quite honestly say, because, you know, there's this case of empathy where you're not just really interested in the process, because you know that process already rigged against you. So think about the whole concept of having to get one former governor, former political holders, political office holders, people that are first-station, they can be allowed to move near anything, near politics. You know, they are the sort of the constitutionally the mandate that must be there. And then I know I'm not choosing from the convention. How is the convention designed? You know, how did they decide if you got a convention and what should it be? At the end of the day, it just starts to become clearer and clearer that this whole game just, you know, has been that who has the most money to spend. Whoever they're saying has claimed, you know, what I don't know about them before, you know, is clearly doing that with money. You know, so the system is really, it's written against you already. It's designed to fail. You know, what's the system designed to fail? There's no need to try. What you must do is go out to the drawing board, I will design a system, shut down the system, I will design it. There's no point trying to, you know, can't keep doing the same next time different results are possible. That's the sanity, you know, that's clearly, you know, the case. It's just this, you know, joke of the times that happened 24 years. Okay, so there might be a limit to what we can do, but we hope that our delegates would select the right people for us so that we can vote them in during the general elections. So Shola is up next after this break.