 Welcome back. It is still the run-up. In case you're just joining us, we've had a very elaborate conversation about insecurity and, you know, all the conversations surrounding that. And to continue, it has been observed that due to the voting patterns in the presidential elections of Nigeria, different voting blocks have emerged. And, of course, these voting blocks have, you know, they greatly, you know, affect or influence the voting patterns and how voting generally happens in Nigeria. And joining us to have this conversation this morning is an expert in that area. I'm talking about IK Bongosa. Good morning, sir. You're welcome. Good morning. Thank you for having me. Okay. So your company did a very comprehensive analysis and a lot of numbers, you know, you people came up with. Amazing job, by the way. That was really nice. And that is what we're going to be talking about today. Now, some people are seeing such figures for the first time. Some people are going to be reading, you know, getting that knowledge that you put out there for the first time. But before we get into that, can you give us a background of, you know, who you people are, what you do, and why you took it upon yourself to do this analysis about voting blocks in Nigeria? Okay. Thank you very much once again for this opportunity. I work for resource technologies limited. We are based out of Binin City. We are a consulting firm with three practice desks, political consulting, technology consulting, and market research. So back to why we did this. We have an ambition to fix Nigeria, right, and we can't fix Nigeria without knowing how our leaders get elected. So we looked at the data sets that is publicly available from election results from 1999 to date. That is 2019, that is. And we noticed the strengths in these elections. We just went through the INEC historical data. We looked at the election results from 1999. We looked at the result from 2003. Interestingly, we found out that there is no breakdown, state-by-state breakdown of election results for 2007. So 2007 result is not included in analysis. But we also took 2011, 2015, and 2019. So basically we wanted to understand the patterns how Nigerians vote, how Nigerians elect their presidents. I don't know if I answered your first question. Thank you very much, Ike. And it's quite patriotic of your group to have taken it upon itself to undertake this very groundbreaking. I call it a groundbreaking effort because I read the report, and my colleague Uche did as well, and we found it extremely informative and instructive. Just some points that have a reason, and perhaps starting off on a lighter note, you chose three interesting names to the three voting blocks that have emerged. You have the Northern Alliance, what you call the Northern Alliance, the Bible Belt, and the Rockies. I was wondering how you arrived at this. Maybe you want to tell our viewers why you chose these labels. Was anything significant in influencing your choosing those labels? Absolutely. Thank you very much. I would give the credit for the interesting names to our managing partner, Mr. Jiro Edobe. So how did he come up with these names? So we first of all grouped the different states in Nigeria according to how they historically voted. For the Bible Belt, the United States of America also has a Bible Belt. So we gave that name because the states that populate the Bible Belt are largely Christian population, just like the Bible Belt in America and some other countries in the world. So the Rockies, we chose the Rockies because they tend to swing between the two major political parties from election to election. That was one thought. And the second thought was the topography of the states in that region. So the states in that region are also largely very rocky. So the states like Oshun, Ogun on those states, those are very rocky states. And the Northern Alliance was chosen because it's a voting block that is mainly located in the North East and the North West of Nigeria. It is mainly the household and the block. So we went for Northern Alliance because it's mainly located in the North East and the North West of Nigeria. Although there's one outlier state in that region, which is Oshun states. So that was how we came up with the names. To 2017, when we had just two parties contesting the general elections, but now we have a credible third force. How do you think this affects your analysis? Yeah, so that's a question we've been getting a lot. Yes, it does affect the analysis and how I'll take it through it. One of the first things to consider is that historically, if you look at the blocks, Nigeria tends to vote along ethnic and religious lines. If you look at the tactics, the, should I say the two major political parties, let's start with them, APC and VDP. Both candidates are of Muslim, above the Muslim religion. Only one candidate from the Labour Party is of Christian religion. So of the three front runners, let me put it that way. One of them is a Christian and the other two are Muslims. Now that has the tendency to swing the election either way. You would agree with me that since the vice presidential candidates were picked, the issue of religion has been in the front burner with respect to the upcoming 23 elections. So that's one. Another one is that some of the candidates are from one block. That is the PDP candidate and the Labour Party candidate. They are both from the Bible Belt. So the Bible Belt encompasses mainly the south-eastern states, the south-southern states, and some of the states, two of the states in the northeast, Taraba and Ademawa states. So we have two candidates coming from the same block. The Northern Alliance doesn't have a candidate in this election. And the candidate of the APC, that is Ashwajibola Mehtinubu, is from the Rockies block. So it doesn't completely throw off the analysis that we've done, but it just opens up more insights. So it opens the window to more research. So how we'll see the impact that the profile of the different candidates will have on the election outcome. And that's quite interesting as well, because we were wondering, Uchi and I, you know, after reading the report, and we noticed that, you know, the focus of that analysis was when, because elections that have been fought, like we said, from 1999 until now, were likely fought by two main political parties. But your response has been very illuminating. We're just wondering. We also have, we used to have a situation in which young people, maybe apart from 1999 and 2003, if I'm correct, elections, aside from those first three elections upon our return to democracy, we haven't seen young people really showing an interest, you know, in the political, in political developments, engaging and so on. But again, from the first coming election, we have seen a radical shift, you know, in the orientation and awareness amongst young people. Do you think this is going to have an impact on your analysis in terms of ownership of the political process? Which, because I just want to clarify, if you consider the population of 206 million, at least 70% of that population is below the age of 30, at least 150 million Nigerians below the age of 30. And now we are seeing such a vibrant engagement by this group, you know. Does that have any implication for ownership of the political process and so on and so forth? And for your analysis, of course, which is the point of discussion. All right. Thank you very much for that question. Yes, we see, all right, we see the potential in the youthful voting brackets. Let me put it that way. If you've been following the CVR by INEC, the Continuous Voter Registration by INEC, 71% of the people that registered in this new CVR were between the age of 18 and 34. That is stunning. That's amazing. That has the potential to swing the election either way. However, the question we've always asked is, historically, the youths have always had that large voting block in the general voter register. But the challenge that we're seeing over time is a problem of low voter turnout. We have incidents where if you go to the actual venue of election day, you tend to see more older people than the youths. The youths will either be in their homes watching TV or playing football on the streets. That if the youths must come in to take charge of the electoral process, that has to change. They hope that we have, because I am a youth, so I'm quite passionate about this. The hope that we have is that given the large number that has come out to indicate interest and the kind of vibrancy and energy that we are seeing on social media, which is largely populated by the youths, we expect to see this trickling to reality where the youth will actually take charge of the process. And if the youths actually take charge of the process, then they have the power to swing things either way, swing things the way they want it to be. So that's how we've seen it so far. Alright, so Lagos happens to be a commercial hub. And by that there is a lot of migration from different parts of the country to Lagos. And the consequence of this is that Lagos turns out usually to have the highest number of registered voters. But it has also been observed that apart from the 1999 and the 2003 elections, Lagos have had, you know, recorded low voter turnout. Where do you think this voter apathy is coming from? Okay, so first of all, just to speak to the numbers in it, in the 2019 election, there's been the large number of voters that Lagos has. Lagos was number four when it came to voter turnout behind Kanu, Kaduna, Katsuna and Jigawa states. That was very instructive and we tried to look into it. Why is voter turnout low in Lagos? Or generally low in Lagos? There are a lot of issues that can lead to no voter turnout. People, like you rightly said, people migrate to Lagos, register to vote in Lagos. But on election day, is there that ownership mindset that they have to go out to vote? A couple of times, some of the voters might think, oh, I'm not originally from Lagos states. Why do I have to even participate in the election in Lagos states? Another trend that we saw was that the more affluent or the more educated and exposed people tend to be, the less likely they are to vote. And Lagos is the most affluent, is the most exposed state in Nigeria. And finally, the major reason that people have given for low voter turnout when we asked them in our various surveys, is convenience. It's either the voting process is too stressful, or they are scared of being victims of violent activities that happen on election day. So those are the major factors that can prevent or that can have adverse effects on voter turnout. Thanks. I was wondering if there is no correlation between the last question that I had asked you about having a more youthful, a more interest by the younger population in the forthcoming 2023 general election and the ownership of the electoral process, which you just alluded to now while you were answering the question as to why Lagos has low voter turnout. So oftentimes we have seen that in our environment, political candidates or political offices are usually sponsored by some money bags or some godfathers, as the politicians themselves refer to it. Now, we have seen a situation, for example, in which younger people participating in the process are using their own money to promote some candidates, print campaign materials as against money bags. Now we increasingly see young people for the candidate that they are backing. They are spending their money. They are doing everything on social media to promote without anybody paying them. Will this have some impact on the election itself in terms of ownership, in terms of a robust engagement with the process and in terms of wanting to ensure the success of the agenda of the younger population? Thank you very much. Yes, we believe with the level of commitment, I mean I wouldn't spend my money on a cause, I don't believe it, right? So we believe that with the level of commitment that the young people are showing, like you rightly said, spending their money to promote their preferred candidates, spending their money on uneven campaigns and rallies. Yes, that's a good sign with respect to turnout because it shows commitment. There's a high likelihood that if I spend my money to sponsor a candidate when it's election day, I will want to go out to vote and I want to drag as many people as possible with me to go out to vote. But you would also agree with me that the electoral process in Nigeria is quite an expensive one. That's why you cannot completely knock off the effect of having money back to sponsor candidates for an election. It's an extremely expensive process. However, with the growth of organic crowdfunding that's happening for various candidates, I believe that will add a lot of commitments by the young people. I mean, like I said, I just started responding to this question. If I don't believe in a process, I wouldn't spend my money on that process. Alright, thank you so much, Ike. We're still going to keep having this conversation, but we're going to go on a quick break when we return. I'm saying this so that you can know and stay on the line with us because we're going to return after this quick break. And then when we return, we're going to keep having this conversation. In case you're just tuning in, we're talking voting patterns in Nigeria and we've had Ike and Ex-Part having that conversation with us. We're going on this quick break, the news comes up at 12. When we return, the run-up will continue. Don't go anywhere, stay with us. Welcome back and I hope you got some really informative tips on the news. Our guest, Ike Bari, is still with us. He is a senior consultant in the research and technology company called Vis House and he's been throwing more light on the analysis of voting patterns in previous elections in Nigeria, which was undertaken by his organization. So Ike is good to have you back as we round off now on the segment of the program. Thank you. Now let's look at something which your reports didn't talk about. So essentially we are being speculative now and it has to do with diaspora voting, the Nigerian diaspora. For quite a number, I think maybe for this third parliamentary session we've always heard parliament saying the National Assembly in Abuja that they would consider allowing Nigerians in diaspora to vote. Even I think the diaspora commission president, a chairperson, a BKW during her trips abroad often had to respond to questions on when the diaspora population would be allowed to vote. Now in the analysis you have done from the experience derived during that analysis, do you think that Nigeria could be ripe for diaspora voting? And secondly, if your answer is in the affirmative, do you think this could have an impact significantly on the voting patterns that we have witnessed since return to democracy? Okay, thank you very much for that question. Yes, the Nigerian diaspora community has every right to demand for the right to vote. And I'm saying this because I think that was 2011. Our forest remittances from Nigeria and diaspora exceeded what we made from crude oil. So if the diaspora community is bringing in that much money, bringing in that much investment to Nigeria, I see no reason why the diaspora community should be excluded from the electoral process. Now, to your question, are we ripe for it? Unfortunately, I would say no, not yet. Our electoral system is still maturing. We are yet to incorporate things like electronic voting and all that, and there's a lot of distrusts in the process in the system. So my opinion, which is just stressing out to me, is that we are not yet ripe for it when there's much more trust in the system, when there's much more confidence in the system. Probably after this electoral cycle, INEC has done a lot. If you look at the elections in the kids or shown own though, a though, you can see that INEC has been making steady progress. When there's a lot more confidence, a lot more trust in the system, yes, we will be ripe for it. And absolutely, the diaspora community will have a massive impact on the outcomes if they are allowed to vote. In JAKBA syndrome, as we would like to fondly call it, it's showing us how Nigerians are moving in droves out of the country. And if that large number forms a voting bloc, maybe the fourth bloc, the JAKBA bloc, you should point me, they have the capacity to swing the election either way. I like that. JAKBA bloc, right? It would be... I'm looking for the adjective now to qualify. It's the JAKBA bloc. Okay, still talking about what we are ripe for and what we aren't. For a while now, during elections, we've heard a lot about electronic voting. You hear issues like how that materials didn't even get to certain places and where it did get to, you would hear that the machines weren't working or there's no battery or all those kind of conversations. When you go on live reporting, you hear these challenges. What do you think is really the challenge? Is it that we are not ripe for electronic voting or do you think there are more to it than meets the eye? Yeah. So our report on earth sounds very interesting statistics. I'll just push you through it very quickly. We looked at, we did a comparative analysis of what happened now between 2015 and 2019, right? And we noticed something very interesting. In the bloc, we like to call the Rockies, which is mainly southwest states and a few of the middle belt states. We saw if a drop, a voter turnout drop, year on year to, we saw a voter turnout drop year on year of minus 6.8%. So the voter turnout was 6.8% less. For the Northern Alliance, we saw a voter turnout drop of minus 5.2%, which is within global figures. Interestingly, in the Bible belts, which is at that time was the most peaceful month, was the most settled and the most accessible part of Nigeria, we saw a drop of minus 15.7%, right? So that was more than double what the older blocs did year on year. And I mean, that alone impacts the results hugely. We drilled deeper into the main drivers of these drops and we realized that in the reverse states, for example, in 2050, reverse states produced over a million votes. But in 2019, reverse states produced about 650,000 votes. Both were the reasons. Violence is a challenge in elections. Political violence. When we moved over to look at the Northern Alliance, we saw a situation where bonus states, which is the most affected by the Boko Haram insurgency, actually experience a growth in voter turnout. So that's why we're saying the major impact, the major factor that can impact or that causes some of the issues that you raised is actually political violence, not just violence in the sense of it, but specifically political violence. So if political violence can be checked, INEC has been able to show that they have some level of capacity to deliver elections, to deploy technology. So that's one. We're very excited when we saw the new electoral act, which, if followed to the letter, is going to ensure that we have better elections than we had last time. However, we're quite disappointed when we realized that the issue of election voting was not allowed to fly. If election voting had flown in this last electoral act, then it would have been fully transformed into the 21st century democracy. So yeah, some of these factors might not be... You cannot rule them out when our voting process is still manual, but we just want to say kudos to INEC. INEC has done quite a lot to ensure transparency, to ensure that voting materials, for example, are able to get to their desired or their required destination. However, there are still a lot that Nigeria has to do in terms of legislation, in terms of logistics and in terms of funding for INEC and all the sister agencies that are responsible for prosecuting the election. So that's what I have to say about that. Thank you, Ike. You talked about funding, and that's precisely the next question that I was going to ask you. Reading through your report, I found that it was quite exhaustive, and Uchi agrees because she said the same thing at the top of the program. So I'm just wondering, how much did it cost you if you can disclose this, if not, it's fine? And then what were the challenges that you confronted in the process of trying to put this report together? Because I haven't seen a report like this on Nigeria's electoral history. I haven't seen a detailed, analytical and exhaustive report of the nature that your group has provided. So tell us what challenges you faced, and if possible, how much it cost you, and who funded it? Okay, thank you very much. Challenges. Our major challenge was data. As of today, we do not have, what we would have actually loved would have been if we can get the versions of the electoral election results from the unit level across the country. So what we did was, we managed the election results from the state level, which is publicly available, but our major challenge was actually gathering the data. Nigeria is blessed with fantastic human resources. Right here in Benin, we're able to resource the team that did the data gathering, the collision, data cleaning, and the descriptive analysis. Right here in Benin City. So we are blessed with, Nigeria is actually blessed with such fantastic human resources. Yeah, our major challenge was data, actually. For funding, I can't really quantify how much it cost us in terms of man-ass, right? We are, of course, we're profit-making organizations. We have, like I said at the beginning of the interview, we have our technology consulting desk that handles technology projects. We have our political consulting desk, which I'm a part of, that handles political projects. So we're engaging a couple of profit-making activities. So this project was fully funded by Visos. Visos is, even if we had a political desk, our goal is to bring professionalism into the political space. That's actually our goal. So I don't know if I'll be able to disclose it. Yes, you did. You did, and I have a quick follow-up. I'm quite impressed because oftentimes when we see reports like this, you find that a foreign entity, and that's why I ask you the question. I don't want to mention those names, but you have the usual suspects who foreign entities that would fund it. And sometimes impression is given that Nigerians cannot produce these kinds of reports unless there's a foreign entity that finances it. And this is another reason why we really need to commend you for this report that we have produced, because you did it without going to any embassy or any foreign organization. And I think this also helps to underwrite the integrity of what you have done. I mean, we're rounding up now. Yes, we are. So is this report available to the public? And how can they access it if it's available? Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. It's on our website, www.vsauce.com. We have the report right there on our website. And let me just quickly say this that we want to also appreciate Business Day. Business Day saw the report, they liked it, and they published it for free on their platforms. I also want to appreciate the Good People at Business Day. All right. Thank you so much, I.K., for having this. I choose to call it an expository session with us. It was really eye-opening and amazing. Thank you so much for coming on the run-up today. We hope to have you some other time to have even more conversations around this. Absolutely. Thank you very much. It was indeed a great pleasure. Thank you, Uchi. Thank you, Bayo. Thank you very much. You're very welcome. In case you're looking around and you're looking for YamGoo, YamGoo could be unavoidably absent today on the show, but hopefully he will be joining us tomorrow. And we're going to be having a complete set on set. And this is where we draw the curtain on today's edition of the run-up. We will be back tomorrow, but until then, do not watch any other TV station apart from Plus TV. We will keep bringing you more entertainment, more information. Stay with us. Do not go anywhere. I second that. And spread the word. Of course. This is where to be.