SHOWDOWN: Possible outcome of 2011 elections

ANCHORED BY: CHIDI CHINEDU

GUESTS: ILEMONA ONOJA (A Lawyer and social activist)
FAVOUR AFOLABI ( Political commentator)

Chidi: To discuss the issues here in the studio today we have two vibrant men. My quest on this show "the youth are not smiling" but i think today we have a reason to smile because the (IGP) Inspector General of police said today in the news that people could use their camera phones and gadgets at election sites. Isn't that interesting?

Onoja: It is in many ways objectory for people who intend just to have free and fair election, but due to financial problems to enforce discipline, ensure that no rigging at the polls and to collate evidence to show where any rigging had occurred and how to use that videos and pictures taken as concrete evidence.

Afolabi: when I heard the news on the web, I was so surprised it was true the IGP said no phones and device are allowed in the first place.

What exactly are the people looking for in the 2011 elections? Many people said we want the PDP out of power, and some other people are saying we want good governance. So what should the youths be looking at is it the PDP or a good leadership?

Onoja: I will think we are looking for good governance, in this election we are going to be voting personalities and not parties. We need to look at candidates that are available across the political parties and pick the people who authored good governance in terms of accountability, integrity, and proper application of our resources.
Why i refuse to agree that PDP is not practicing good governance. I agree to some peoples' opinion. We had very good performing PDP governors like the Cross River state governor. With all the governor has done, I think the place is a better place now.

Afolabi: In my own case. I think young people should be careful about unnecessarily drawing into partisanship. I have heard a lot of young people saying they are voting for PDP at the national level, and at the same time voting for ACN in Lagos.

So I asked my self that what exactly are we looking for. Are we looking for good governance or a party? We are looking for good governance.
People need to be careful about blind partisanship.

Now we are looking at the new development in the political clime. In view of the elections. Yesterday we had the MDG debate session and it was more or less like a monologue for the vice presidential aspirant of the PDP. Do you think the political parties that pulled out were justified?

The allegation made by these parties is that the President had access to the questions to be asked at the debate. If we look at it from another perspective we will say they were trying to be safe, not wanting to go to a particular place and have the results embarrassed. But then again in this campaign, it must be a clearly mapped campaign. I think they made quite a lot of mistake. It's been thought they were better than the president if there message was we are better than the president at the moment and we seek to take his job.

Do you think primarily they should have focused on the interest of the Nigerian people?

Yes. The debates were not about President Jonathan. The debates were about 150 million Nigerians who want to hear from their current leader and people aspiring for political office. Good number of people have said since this people are being arrogant definitely there is noting different between over the issue of attending debates.

In your opinion do you think we can actively prevent rigging in elections?

We can do is to we come out in mass to vote.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld from Glo Mobile.