 No ffewyr dden nhw'n six point seven million Nigerians are yet to collect their permanent voter cards in less than eight weeks to the general elections data obtained by the offices in the state of the Independence National Electrical Commission. INAIC revealed that six point seven million PVCs were locked up in INAIC safe across 17 states in the federal capital territory. And the INAIC National Commissioner for Information and Volter Education Festival Culley disclosed rywbeth sy'n ddangos cael pethau iechyd gan 5-15 ym 6-23 y gweithio,Feigwyr Poresbydd yn gwneud y lliffeithio yn cyfu ar y Llywodraethol, ac mae'n tynnu'r ein gweithio. Mae'n cael eu ddweud ar y Gweithio Llywodraethol. Ychydig, oedd Cymru yma i yn y Llywodraeth Llywodraeth lefnoddolion Llywodraeth yn llunio'r cynhyrchu i annoddol, oedd y gwneud i'r hallu cyntaf gyda duolig i fyfyddymu yr hyn o'r cyllid gydaen nhoneu a'r cyllid Gwladol Gallagol yn ysgolio ac yn yllexoedd gyrfa y ddymarfa yn y cyllid yn y cyllid yn ein masbannol i'r cyllid yn y cyllid yn technaed cael wyrwyr oedd yn eu cyllid yn y proses ac yn y proseddious sy'n ymddyン� Oherwydd, fynd i'n… ymddindnosnig pan wedi rhoi Gwladol yn effaith ddigir ar gyfer y Fhleiddiad ac yn ymddindnosnig yn y cyllid yn y cyllid yn y cyllid yn y cyllid yn y cyllid yn y cyllid yn y cyllid I like the fact that INEC is talking about the use of technologies because before now we would be talking about writing results but we've gone past that and thank goodness, 2023 has come with some new innovation. But let's go straight to it. What is Vault O23? Alright, so thank you for having me once again. So Vault O23 is a digital platform that we put together chiefly to change people's behaviour towards elections. So we crafted not very non-partisan messages and in various languages from English, Pugin, Yuba, Ibo, Ausa and we're telling people look the power to change the country is in your hands simply by getting your PVC and going out to vote. And we're telling you reasons if you visit our campaign site VaultO23.org why you should go out to vote. So if you really care about healthcare, if you really care about education you should go out there and vote. And we also have a public service line that when you call that line and you listen to our message to the end there's an incentive for you. Before we get to the incentive. So Vault O23 means you need to vote come 2023 and you have 23 reasons why people should vote. Let's talk about the 23 reasons in an order in a particular order for those who are watching because this segment is to educate the voters. So let's start with the number one reason. Number one reason is value for life. If you go to our website the very first thing is value for life. I'm going to briefly remember all of them in that order chronological order but number one is value for life. We want people to say you know what a number of people say you know what I think that people should you should go and vote one because you care about Generally human life right and if justice which is another reason again is important to you then you should go out and vote. So we have value for life, we have justice, we have security, we have healthcare, we have job creation, we have actually run through the entire thing. I want to pick the one after the other. So value for life we were looking through 2022 and all of the major events that took place. And I remember just as Google put it from January of 2022 to almost December the first thing that happened in the first month was massacres, massacres, killings. I tell you what in the whole of 2022 we had just two positive things that happened. Tobi Amosongwon broke a 16 year record and I think one more thing which I can't remember but everything else was doom and gloom. And so yes of course it brings the issue of value to life to the table. So if we're picking a leader we have to look at a leader who's able to prioritise that because again the avid Nigerian within and without would say that what would ask the question what is the value placed on one Nigerian's life. I totally agree and I mean if you look at the culture which I'm a very hopeful person and I hope that this will change. You know you were living in a culture where people get to you know they assess you and you know if this is the look at you know like this is the kind of money that's in your account and then you see your your your elder calling you or that's just because they just feel you're right. This is Benz which you shouldn't be so really you know so for me personally and so other people if you look at all the candidates again we don't really talk about candidates but we talk about reasons but when you listen to all the candidates. I'm not sure you can sort of one of them will resonate to you and it's okay based on this person's speech or this person's manifesto this is where this is how the value human means or this is where the value the life of Nigerian cities and that should influence you to at least go out to vote. So whoever you think sort of you know does it for you you know should influence you should go out and vote based on that reason. You made mention of the fact that these messages are non-partisan in other words you're not campaigning for anyone it's not sponsored by any political party have you been approached by any political party to want to participate or help you in your virtual education. Well I mean interestingly when we kicked off in we had people say you know what okay we don't want you to be very obvious about the political party behind you but you can sort of share some some data with us and we're like no do you get that that can happen because one of the things we said publicly is after this campaign is over if you want to come on or did what we've done you can come on or did that so absolutely no and it's not even in it. It's not even in the best interest of any political party because our messages are very non-partisan and at this period every political person of interest should be promoting themselves and we're not about promoting anybody so the messages being non-partisan doesn't even help you at all so I don't see anybody really pushing that agenda so the initiative has been mostly self-funded by myself a group of friends and then recently United States US Embassy in Nigeria. Just okay give us a grant your tech entrepreneur and a lot of people will say techies are always building software at why did you decide to go into this and you do you do you have an idea or was it that you felt a need because of what you see on the ground. Okay so first of all at Imagine Labs we're always building very innovative products from let's say Uber for ambulances to the fintech product for clients or a whistleblowing platform for an agency so it really depends on what we're doing exciting things and a couple of months almost a year back we had the solution that had this hybrid of IVR calls and SMS and air time and we had the intention to use it for different things. And interestingly towards the election a number of people came towards us okay you could use this for election you know but as a person of faith at a point in time I just got this inspiration so you know what take this technology public and make it non-partisan where we weren't interested in being very partisan as regards this particular project. I mean the other projects we could get involved in but for this particular project very non-partisan so it came in place of inspiration and also okay you know what true confession this is the first time that I'm actually going to vote. So yeah so I think for me I came from a place of you've been complaining for years and you haven't done anything about it so really you don't have any right to complain so this time around if you're not going to complain what are you going to do what are you going to contribute. So for the very first time I decided to vote I decided to also encourage millions of Nigerians to go out and vote so that's how all this came about. I'm most curious as to why you have never voted and I'm not sure you're just turning 18 so I'm just curious why has it taken you so long to vote. I mean sincerely what made you what put you off voting. Well I would say that um thinking about it I'll take a couple of things one is I guess the the Vota Apatibog beats me maybe coming from maybe my background and I just grew up in a family where I didn't really see my parents vote to start with one so I think somehow that's all of this. Sorry mommy and daddy so um so I think somehow that's sort of maybe indoctrinated me like okay this this thing is not just really important so that's one that's what I would say secondly I would say that also growing up there was also the fear of violence you know we see in the news where there's some trouble some hotspots and then you also have one one of your parents telling you I don't want to lose my son I don't want to lose to get so that I think val growing up and not seeing you know people in my household vote I think that sort of rubbed up on me and then secondly would be fear of violence. Right but again that ends that's why we're doing that's why you're doing this so 23 reasons why people should vote. How did it get access to this information because the last time I spoke to you you talked about you know putting a call through to people in different languages and then if they listen to the call to the end that call carries a messaging which encourages them to go vote right. Tell us how it works and what is at the end of the call. Okay all right thank you so there are two ways you can engage with a platform so users can either go to vote023.org and when you go there the very first thing you see is a mission and objective and then you can dive straight to your surface where you can click on listen. You can actually listen to the message online and you can choose any message at all. Then the second one is you can call our public service line. I believe it's 016-01700-6212-01700-6212 so if you call that number and you will hear a jingle and ask you for your language and you select your language and then when you select your language you listen to it to the very end and there's a very nice jingle playing telling you the power is in your hands. You have the responsibility to select the right leader and basically how powerful your vote is so therefore go out and vote. I think it's about a 45-50 seconds message less than a minute so if you listen to it to the very end you get to incentivise you with 100nR airtime. Now that 100nR airtime is more like to just get you excited to also tell your friends that hey I call this number and they give us airtime so that's what we did and we notice that every time we load the system with airtime there's this spike. We get to see lots of people calling and we started in Lagos, we don't have any representative but we see the numbers in the north also spiking up and paging language and Ibo and Hyrobar. So this incentive would really mostly work for people in those urban areas and I'm guessing that that's your target because again the average person that comes out to vote is not you and I. Yes we do a couple of us but then there has been that margin for people like you and me who don't necessarily show up to the polling units but then the guys at the grassroots, the lowest of the low, they are the ones who really show up for the election. So I'm thinking when you were developing this app did you have them at the back of your mind with the different languages? Again you put house at Ibo and Hyrobar but then Nigeria has several other languages so does the paging suffice? Thank you very much. After English language paging language is actually paging language. Paging is actually like the highest number immediately after English so we see that okay. I mean the guy that understands also our Eurobar chances are he also knows understands paging so we actually see paging language is actually really really high. Obviously we couldn't do so many languages. It's not as if we don't want to but hey that's where we need sponsors. Support. Now you also talked about how other people can sponsor a voter so tell us how that works. How do I sponsor more people because this is more like paying it forward. So what are people supposed to do if I can afford whatever it is whether it's 100 nair or whatever. I don't know what it is. How do I pay it forward so that more and more people can understand that the power is in their hands. Wonderful question. So one of the things we did is we tried to make this the citizens campaign. So if you go to our website you can either go to our website and just go to sponsorship or you can go to voteototree.org for a sponsorship. So if you go there we did a breakdown of okay this is how much it costs us to to make a call and this is how much the air time is. So I think on average the cost for a call is about 130 nair because of the 100 nair air time and then 130 nair to cover for SMS and people flashing the line. You wouldn't get to flashing line a lot. Just testing to see if it works. Exactly and then for everybody that calls also saying thank you SMS and issue for the message and things like that. So we made it very simple that a call is about 130 nair and you can just go to the sponsorship section and say you know what I am just going to sponsor 10 calls. That's fine 1,300 if you can sponsor 10,000 calls. Great a million calls by all means please come. I think we had this chat last time where when we did the national launch there was a security guy very close by and I was like he's very interested in sponsoring 30 calls and that really touched me because we didn't want it to be like okay this is just something only for culprits. We wanted it to be that for anybody that actually had a call it was sponsored by somebody else. So because you've enjoyed this air time you've enjoyed the message you've heard the message and you know you can stop there and say oh well I'm good or at least you can share it. But then the next thing you can do is okay you know what this thing actually costs money let me just go and sponsor 10 calls or 20 calls and people have sponsored 10 calls 20 calls. So if you just go to the website voteosotree.org click on sponsorship and you can pay which other card online. Wow this is very innovative and what has the response been whether it be the sponsorship whether it be the clicks because I'm sure you see what you see is clicks and you know like you said there's a spike. From when you launched and now because we're getting 50 days before the major elections what's been the demographic that you've covered the most. Yeah well so because we're not a telco we can only just sort of judge based on the language we are listening to. So yeah so by that we can gauge that okay after English there's a lot of paging and then the next thing is also so that just sort of tells us that okay this thing has travelled to the north and a lot of people listening to it. So other than that it will be very interesting to maybe after the campaign we maybe if we get permission from the telco like okay it really talked to us where did all these calls come from but right now we can't tell where all the calls are coming from because that's very sensitive data we don't have access to. Before we come back to the website so the people who are watching can go to it. Let's talk about young people like you and you know the elections that are coming up because I'm sure you were privy to the open letter that was recently by former president of Lusie Gorbasson just to young people. It was mostly directed at young people and he continuously hopped upon the fact that this elections would be one way or the other in the hands of young people and they are the determinant of how it would go. Do you see young people aside from the phenomenon that we see on social media the wave the you know the whole drive. Do you see a replication at the polls in terms of I like to say we still have millions of voters card that have not been you know picked up. Do you see that replicating in 2023 election as opposed to what we see we've seen over time with the voter apathy that you have made mention of. I mean it's really hard to tell and we can only be hopeful because I mean there is there's a talking part and then there's the doing part right. So but if I if I could go by just the survey that that I do personally probably if I get into an Uber and I talk to just random people. Right. So so say for instance the any random Uber young person and driver that I speak to will tell me OK you know what I'm interested in voting and I actually have my PVC. So not just so but I because that's a very small sample said I can't really say you know but I mean this election looks very interesting and I really don't want to underestimate anybody at all. It is very possible that with all the things that have happened you know recently in the past the ensas and all the you know insecurity. I think people a lot of people are tired particularly young people. But the same thing happened in between 2015 and 2019 and we still saw a lot of people not show up to in fact the number of voters drastically dropped. So again if what happened in in between 2015 and 2019 was a dampener who's to say that 2022 which had more of the spikes in all of the massacres and killings would not put a dampener also. Only a prophet could tell. Only a prophet could tell but I mean I think we also we also have a very interesting generation because what social media was what social media was about. Let's say four years ago is not what social media is right now because if you look at it it was also true social media that the ensas protest was organized. So in as much as we could just say oh there's a lot of talk in social media but people also get to use social media to really organize PVC drives and communities and body systems. So it would be interesting to just see what people are doing. I mean anytime I post up something in my WhatsApp story I get people telling me well I can actually help people get their PVC OK I can mount pressure on XYZ things like that. So if that just happened at the WhatsApp status level she would get if you escalated to you know a few couple of hundreds of thousands of people you know we just never know. I mean yes I know that there's two millions of PVC that have been collected or again I mean if you look at Lega State for an example you know what you really need is just one million young people coming out to vote and it doesn't look that impossible you know but let's see. And we do have a lot of young people. So finally the number again for people to call to hear these messages. And you said you said it's 0 1 7 0 0 6 2 1 2 that's 0 1 7 0 0 6 2 1 2 so if they call they could hear the message telling them why it's important to vote. And for those who want to sponsor calls what's the website again? Vote 0 2 3 dot org. Vote 0 2 3 dot org. Correct. All right. Well jukwem e gan ba is a tech entrepreneur but of course it's the brain behind vote 0 2 3 dot org. Thank you so much of course. Thank you Mary. You are one way or the other making an impact and educating voters. And that's it on the show tonight on plus politics. We'll be back tomorrow talking for development. Don't forget your PVC is your passport to a new Nigeria. Go get it. I'm Mary Anakorn. Have a good evening.