Abuja Nov 5, 2021 (NAN) Stakeholders in governance have urged Nigerian youths to be advocates of good governance and leadership in order to make Nigeria a better place.

They gave the advice in separate interviews with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) at the second global good governance awards and summit held in Abuja on Friday.

The theme for the award is “ Good governance mentality for global impact.

Dr Odiakpo Obire, the founder of Good leadership for Africa, an Abuja based Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) said the aim of the awards were to encourage African leaders to take their place as leaders among world leaders.

He said the youths of Africa had what it takes to elect the right leaders into offices as this was fundamental to their future and the success of the country.

According to him, good governance and leadership are achievable and controllable by the youths.
“ Good governance and leadership make strong institutions.

“ The Africa and Nigeria of our dreams cannot be achieved if youths neglect accountability and advocacy of good leadership’, he said.

Obire stated that everyone appointed into a leadership position could help achieve a great Nigeria if they put the needs of the masses first and do what was expected of them.

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“ From the Federal Government to the local government, to the appointees to the least held office, everyone has the responsibility to do the right thing, ” he said.

He said democracy in Nigeria is over 22 years and youths had to rise to the responsibility of advocating for good leadership and accountability.

“ Good governance starts from selecting good leaders by the youths, ” he said.

Amb. Louis Temisan, Mayorking Ultimate International Magazine said a lot of people, institutions and NGOs are worthy of celebration because they advocate good governance.

“ People, institutions and NGOs who are staff minded, support youth empowerment, community development deserve all the celebration and recognition, ” he said.

According to him, advocating for and publicising good governance will challenge other lacking leaders to do better in their respective communities.

Amb. Anthony Nwangwu disclosed that good governance should be measured by good directions and steps taken by a leader to ensure life was easy for people.

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He said good governance is not measured by the number of cars a leader has or how much cash they throw around.

Nwangwu said good governance affects every facets of life.

NAN reports that about 30 people from the private and public sectors were recipients of different awards.

Some category of these awards include, award of Excellence in Human resource, award of best security outfit and award of best youth empowerment. (NAN)

By Gistflash News

Sept 26, 2021

Sen. Ali Modu Sheriff, a former governor of Borno and an All Progressives Congress (APC) National Chairmanship aspirant, has said the party needs a “rugged“ national chairman to manage its affairs ahead of the 2023 general elections.

He said this while speaking with newsmen on Sunday in Abuja on his aspirations and plans for the APC if he emerged the next national chairman, pointing out that he was not new to the party.

He said if he was elected as the APC’ s next helmsman at its forthcoming national convention billed to hold before the end of 2021, he would meet the aspirations of all party members.

“I am bringing in my experience as somebody who knows the terrain of Nigeria. I am bringing my experience as a two-term state governor.

“I will be bringing in my experience as a leader of the National Assembly. I am coming to the table as someone who understands the terrain and as someone who has ran political parties in different aspects.

“I am not a newcomer. I am not a novice. I was the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of All Nigerian People’s Party (ANPP), one of the legacy parties that formed the APC.

“I am bringing to the table my knowledge of who and who worked hard to make sure that we succeed and who and who left because they were angry.

“I will go to their houses and bring them back. So, I am bringing a package that will meet the aspirations of every man and woman of this party,” he said.

Sheriff said he had been going round the country, making consultations and discussing with leaders of the party of his intentions and aspirations.

He noted that the APC as a political party was about six –and-half years, saying that it was a combination of different political parties.

Sheriff said the APC needed someone who had served in different capacities, adding that there was need to build bridges across the country.

He said though the APC was only six years in government, its aspirations was to be in government for the next 30 to 40 years.

He, however, noted that achieving such an aspiration would not come on the platter of gold, but with hard work and dedication of party members.

The two-term former governor said he was reaching out to party leaders, the youth, women and other groups within the party.

He said the essence was to tell them that they must come together to get the APC to rule for the next four decades by the grace of God.

“To do that you need a rugged captain, you don’t need a captain that will capsize the ship.

“A ship has to be navigated by a knowledgeable person who knows the waters and I believe I can do that for our party if given the opportunity by party men and women who are the decision makers.

“There are so many people in the field but you can look at everybody and see where you can put your deposit. We don’t want a bank that will collapse after a short period,” he said.

Sheriff,  described as a strong-willed individual, said he would continue to consult the party’s critical stakeholders, visiting them in their homes until everybody was consulted.

He said contrary to speculations, he had consulted with the people of Borno, his home state, including Gov. Babagana Zulum.

“Maybe, it is just a perception, but I discussed with all the stakeholders in Borno about my ambition. I talk to them one on one.

“I have gone and discussed with the governor, who is the leader of the party in the state about my ambition and aspirations.

“You don’t go out without talking to your home base, in that respect, I have been talking to all of them,” he said.

He added that speculation that he was not in talking terms with some of the party’s stakeholders in Borno was not correct.

He maintained that he had no problem with anyone, adding that he had been carrying all the party’s critical stakeholders along in his aspirations.

According to him, you don’t for whatever reason, help people and start fighting them.

“I was a governor for eight years, I have been in Senate several times. I am not looking for any of these positions again because I have already gone past them.

“I’m not looking for anything that someone from Borno is looking for, therefore we will work together to achieve this position for all of us,” he said.

Asked if he was sure of being accepted as APC next national chairman by its governors, Sheriff said he had been visiting and consulting with the governors as the party’s leaders in their states to sell his candidacy to them.

“They are leaders of this country in all aspects of life. Anybody who can run a state, elected by his people to become a governor must be respected.

“Therefore, I am sure every governor will like his party to always win and will want to see a chairman that if the opposition see, they know that they cannot play with the party.

“Every governor will be interested to work with somebody that he can relate with and somebody that is one of them.

“I am one of them. I was a governor and by that s automatically I am one of them. I don’t think I have any problem with any governor.

“I respect them that is why I visit them. I don’t go and see them in Abuja. I go to their states to talk to them because they are the leaders of the party, they are leaders of their states,” he said.

He said that he did not have any problem with any governor and would not have problems working with any of them because he had absolute respect for them.

NAN

By Gistflash News

Sept 26, 2021

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), in its strongest defence of e-transmission of election results, says it has developed adequate structures and processes to successfully transmit election results electronically.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the commission disclosed this in its “Position Paper No.1/2021 Electronic Transmission of Election” released on Saturday, in Abuja.

The commission stated that the available national infrastructures, including mobile network coverage were adequate to provide for electronic transmission of election results.

In the paper, INEC expressed its belief that electronic transmission of results would improve the quality of election results management, while its engagement with stakeholders had shown that the Nigerian public supported electronic transmission of election results.

“The technology and national infrastructure to support this are adequate.

“Consequently, if the choice was up to INEC, the commission prefers to transmit election results electronically once the necessary legal framework is provided,” it said.

The objectives of the position paper, according to INEC, was to explain the desirability of electronic transmission of results as an electoral reform issue in Nigeria today, adding that it was also to clarify the position of INEC on some of the central issues around e-transmission of results.

“To build a consensus on electronic transmission of results as an electoral reform issue based on a shared understanding of its desirability towards the 2023 general election,” is also another reason, INEC explained.

The commission disclosed that for over a decade it had piloted the electronic transmission of election results via Short Messaging System (SMS) for off-cycle and bye-elections in 2011.

“The second system piloted for the 2011 General Election was called the e-Track. The idea was to use handheld scanners to scan all polling unit results and send them as PDF files to a backend for processing and publishing.

“Unfortunately, the commission’s staff deployed for that purpose did not scan many of the results, while some of the scanned results were not legible.”

However, it noted that for the 2011 presidential results collation, INEC set up a system of transmitting state level results electronically to the national collation centre in Abuja, ahead of the arrival of the physical result, through a secured e-mail address that only the chairman of the Commission could access.

The paper stated that the innovation enabled the results to be ready for crosschecking against the physical result and to be displayed for public viewing during collation, which had brought a lot of transparency into the final collation of Presidential election results.

It added that since 2011, that had remained the procedure for collating Presidential election results at the National Collation Centre in Abuja and had since evolved into what is today called “The Collation Support and Result Verification System (CSRVS),” even though the manually collated results was still being use to declare results.

“Finally, for several off-season and by-elections conducted since the 2019 general election, the commission had begun to electronically publish images of polling unit results through its INEC Result Viewing (IReV) Portal.”

Specifically, this system had been deployed in several major off-season/end-of-tenure and by-elections, including  the Edo and Ondo state governorship elections, six senatorial and three Federal Constituency by-elections, 15 State constituencies and one councillorship constituency in the FCT, INEC said.

“From the results obtained from these elections, the commission is convinced that electronic results management will add great value to the transparency and credibility of elections in Nigeria“, it added.

While IReV was not electronic transmission of results, it noted, the portal had helped INEC to test three things that were central to electronic transmission of results, including the efficacy of electronic results management, should the legal encumbrance be lifted.

The position paper added that INEC had used the IReV portal to test the security of its systems and the capacity of the national infrastructure to support future electronic transmission of results.

“Since August 2020, the commission has conducted elections and transmitted election results from 20 States and the FCT, covering 27 constituencies spread across 84 LGAs, 925 Wards and 14,296 Polling units involving 9,884,910.

“The conclusion that the commission draws from these diverse pilots conducted since 2011 is that the country is ready for electronic transmission of results.

“The national ICT infrastructure is also adequate for the purpose of electronic transmission of results.

“This is underscored by all the discussions held with the Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) and the regulator, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), over the ten-year period of these pilots, but especially between 2018 and 2019.

“It is important to share the outcome of those discussions to underscore the commission’s conviction about the readiness of the country for electronic transmission of election results”, the commission added.

Over the years, the commission stated that it had established a longstanding partnership with both MNOs and NCC, with the discussion on electronic transmission of results.

Ahead of the 2019 general elections, in particular, INEC noted that the two commissions had established the INEC/NCC Joint technical committee on electronic transmission of election results, of which the final report was submitted on Aug. 9, 2018.

The report detailed the work and recommendations involving the major MNOs and the NCC as the regulator of telecommunications in Nigeria, profoundly convinced INEC that electronic transmission of election results was possible for the 2019 general elections.

Lamentably, the position paper added that this did not happen because INEC did not receive any legal backing for it, even though based on the report’s recommendations, INEC was convinced that Nigeria had the infrastructure to implement the electronic transmission of election results.

“The MNOs have the capacity to do so and network coverage across the country is adequate and secure.

“This position is substantiated by the 2018 position of the people who should know, namely the MNOs, who informed the Joint Committee that they had provided such services to other customers, including the NCC, which regulates telecommunications in Nigeria.

“This is particularly so because the joint technical committee submitted its report three years ago.

“With the massive developments that constantly take place in the telephony and data transmission sector, the capacity would have further improved since then.

“In other words, the capacity is even more reliable today than it was three years ago when the MNOs and the NCC certified that electronic transmission of election results was possible.

“The contrary positions are probably built on some misconceptions which must be addressed”, INEC argued.

The misconceptions, according to INEC, included the assumption that electronic transmission of election results was the same as electronic balloting or Internet voting, which was false.

It also faulted recent trending arguments by some politicians suggesting that the challenges experienced with the Smart Card Reader (SCR) during elections was an indication that INEC was not ready for e-transmission of results.

“There is no connection between any imagined issues with the SCR and electronic transmission of election results”, it said.

It added that an unusual impression had also been created that electronic transmission of election result was dependent on the type of generation of the mobile network, between G2 to G5, available at a location.

“To suggest that 2G cannot transmit election data is simply incorrect. In any case, the MNOs and the NCC were well aware that only 2G network existed in some places in the country when in 2018 they concluded that electronic transmission of results was possible.”

INEC also stated that while INEC needs a partnership with NCC to transmit election results electronically, it did not require its approval, as section 160 of the Constitution empowered INEC to “impose duties” on other federal government agencies in the discharge of its functions.

“Put simply, to require INEC to obtain attestation from NCC and approval of the National Assembly to implement electronic transmission of election results will amount to a breach of the Constitution.

“Indeed, INEC should rather impose the necessary duties on the NCC to ensure that the electronic transmission of election results is actualised.”

What INEC urgently required was a legal framework that enabled rather than inhibits electronic transmission of results specifically, and full electronic voting generally, it stated, while citing the three broad critical areas in amending the Electoral Act, including “provisions that enable the INEC to introduce relevant technologies at the right time”.

It also suggested that the Electoral Act should make for electronic accreditation of voters, based on biometric features, the basis for allowing voters to cast their ballots.

“The current situation whereby manual accreditation takes precedence over biometric accreditation via electronic means, undermines the full benefits of the application of technology to elections.

“Combined with IReV portal, which is already operational, electronic transmission will strengthen the openness of results management and make it possible for election officials to be held accountable for their actions, where necessary, the electoral umpire added.

NAN