Rowland Hill was a former schoolmaster, whose only experience of the Post Office in the 1830s was as a disgruntled user.

Nobody had asked him to come up with detailed proposals for completely revamping it. He did the research in his spare time, wrote up his analysis, and sent it off privately to the chancellor of the exchequer, naively confident that  "a right understanding of my plan must secure its adoption".

He felt his outsider status was a positive benefit. "In few departments," he wrote, "have important reforms been effected by those trained up in practical familiarity with their details.

"The men to detect blemishes and defects are among those who have not, by long familiarity, been made insensible to them."

But Hill was soon to get a lesson in human nature. People whose careers depend on a system, no matter how inefficient it might be, will not necessarily welcome a total outsider turning up with a meticulously argued diagnosis of its faults and proposals for improvements.

"Utterly fallacious… most preposterous," blustered the secretary of the Post Office, Colonel Maberly. "Wild… extraordinary," agreed the Earl of Lichfield, the postmaster-general.

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Brushed off by the chancellor, Hill changed tack. He printed and distributed his proposals, insisting that his lack of experience meant he was perfectly qualified for the task at hand.

He was not the only person frustrated with the system, and many who read his manifesto - and were not employed by the Post Office - agreed that it made perfect sense.

The Spectator magazine campaigned for Hill's reforms.  There were petitions. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge made representations.  Within three years, the government had bowed to public pressure, and appointed a Post Office supremo: Hill himself.

What were the problems Hill identified? Back then, you did not pay to send a letter. You paid to receive one. The pricing formula was complicated and usually prohibitively expensive.

If the postman knocked on your door in the city of Birmingham, with a three-page letter from London, he would let you read it only if you coughed up two shillings and threepence.

That was not far below the average daily wage, even though "the whole missive might not weigh a quarter of an ounce", just a few grams.   

People found workarounds.

Members of Parliament could send letters free of charge, so if you happened to know one, they might "frank" your letters as a favour. The free-franking privilege was widely abused. By the 1830s, MPs were apparently penning an improbable seven million letters a year.

Another common trick was to send coded messages through small variations in the address.

You and I might agree that if you sent me an envelope addressed "Tim Harford", that would signify you were well, but that if you addressed it "Mr T Harford", I would understand you needed help. When the postman knocked, I would inspect the envelope, and refuse to pay.

Hill's solution was a bold two-step reform.

Senders, not recipients, would be asked to pay for postage; and it would be cheap - one penny, regardless of distance, for letters of up to half an ounce, 14g.

Hill thought it would be worth running the post at a loss, to stimulate what he called "the productive power of the country".

But he made the case that profits would actually go up, because if letters were cheaper to send, people would send more of them.

A few years ago the Indian-born economist CK Prahalad argued that there was a fortune to be made by catering to what he called "the bottom of the pyramid", the poor and lower-middle class of the developing world.

They did not have a lot of money as individuals, but they had a lot of money when you put them all together.

Hill was more than 150 years ahead of him.

He pointed to a case when small payments from large numbers of poor people had mounted up for the government: "duties on malt and ardent spirits - which, beyond all doubt, are principally consumed by the poorer classes" brought in much more than those on "wine, the beverage of the wealthy".

Hill concluded, slightly disparagingly: "The wish to correspond with their friends may not be so strong... as the desire for fermented liquors, but facts have come to my knowledge tending to show that, but for the high rate of postage, many a letter would be written, and many a heart gladdened too, where the revenue and the feelings of friends now suffer alike."

He was right. In 1840, the first year of Penny Post, the number of letters sent more than doubled. Within 10 years, it had doubled again.

It took only three years for postage stamps to be introduced in Switzerland and Brazil, a little longer in America, and by 1860, they were in 90 countries. Hill had shown that the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid was there to be mined.

Cheap postage brought the world some recognisably modern problems: junk mail, scams, and a growing demand for immediate response. Half a century on from Hill's Penny Post, deliveries in London were as frequent as hourly, and replies were expected by "return of post".

But did the Penny Post also diffuse useful knowledge, and stimulate productive power?

A group of economists recently came up with an ingenious test of this idea in the United States. They gathered data on the spread of post offices in the 19th Century, and the number of applications for patents from different parts of the country.

New post offices did indeed predict more inventiveness, just as Hill would have expected.   

Nowadays, what we call "snail mail" looks to be in terminal decline. There are so many other ways to gladden our friends' hearts.

Meanwhile, the average office worker gets well over 100 emails a day.  We no longer need societies to promote the diffusion of useful knowledge - we need better ways to distil it.

But the economists who researched the link between post offices and patents argue the 19th Century postal service does have a lesson to teach us today: namely, that "government policy and institutional design have the power to support technological progress".

So what current blemishes and defects in these areas might be holding progress back?

We need Hill's successors to tell us.

Compiled by Olalekan Adeleye

BBC

Scott Mautz

• Unfortunately, it's not difficult to find toxicity in the workplace. What's trickier is spotting its root causes.

• Not hiring, or "fixing," a toxic employee can save you more than hiring a top worker. So it's good for business to learn what's creating toxic employees.

• If an employee is self-centered, overconfident, or constantly talks about following the rules, you may have toxicity on your hands.

Spotting toxicity in a workplace isn't hard given its prevalence (an astounding 76 percent of bosses are considered toxic by their employees). But spotting what causes it, the unspoken rules embedded in a culture or the specific employee traits most likely to lead toxic behavior, can be trickier.

Unless you follow the findings of a major study on workplace toxicity conducted at Harvard University in a 2015 groundbreaking study. The study came back into the limelight at a recent event I keynoted at, with exasperated clients asking me after the talk how to address a toxic culture that was emerging at their company.

Here's why it matters. For the first time the Harvard study pegged a financial number to solving the problem of the toxic employee (defined as one who engages in behavior that damages the company or fellow employees).

Specifically, while a top worker can return more than $5,000 in cost savings to a company through increased output, avoiding hiring or "fixing" a toxic employee nets well over $12,000 in savings (not including savings from avoiding litigation, regulatory penalties, or decreased productivity in other employees due to low morale induced by the toxic individual).

The money factor pales in comparison to the overall damage caused — other employees quitting at a faster and more frequent rate, a loss of customers, and the tanking of a culture.

Now, about spotting the kind of behavior that will most commonly lead to future toxic behavior. Here's what the study found are the three biggest warning flags to watch for.

An excessive high level of self-confidence

In other words, someone who is highly selfish by definition doesn't care about others. Which means they certainly won't care how their behavior or attitude affects coworkers.

Even worse are the selfish employees who have zero self-awareness or inkling that they're coming across and acting like a self-centered you-know-what. So employees who consistently act in selfish ways should send a signal flare that compounding toxic behavior lies ahead.

An excessive high level of confidence

Overconfidence leads to undue risk-taking with destructive behaviors. As Dylan Minor, co-lead on the study told the Harvard Gazette: "Imagine you're going to engage in some misconduct and steal something from your company. If you think the chance that you're going to get away with it is much greater than it really is, you're more likely to engage in that conduct."

This is the same mentality that leads brash criminals to commit stupid crimes: they don't think they'll get caught. Overconfidence plays out in more subtle ways too; the employee thinks they're clever enough to fire off barbs and doses of negativity without their corrosive patterns being spotted or reprimanded.

This issue is exacerbated by the fact that Dylan's research also shows that overconfident-to-the-point-of-toxic employees tend to be highly productive. So they often go unaddressed, which is brutal on broader employee morale.

Emphatic pronouncements that “rules should always be followed”

This one is counterintuitive. You'd think rule followers would do just that in culturally friendly ways. Dylan explains: "But I find very strong evidence in my study that those that say 'Oh no, you should always follow the rules' versus those that say 'Sometimes you have to break the rules to do a good job' are much more likely to be terminated for breaking the rules."

It's a way for the supposed rule followers to visibly and verbally throw people off their scent, or to articulate the way they know they should act to ease their guilt for knowing they're actually going to do the opposite of what they proclaim.

What good comes from knowing these signs of bad?

Knowing these three warning signs serves as another discerning factor to watch for in interviews to help avoid bringing "high toxic potentials" into your organization.

Spotting these signs in current employees gives you a hit list of behaviors to keep an eye on or proactively address. Doing so cuts off the behavior's direct and indirect impact (discouraging others from behaving the same way).

The study found that without question, the worst thing you can do is nothing. Unaddressed toxicity has a corrosive impact on surrounding employees who will feel unsupported and will conclude that accountability in the company is absent.

So watch for these signs and post a sign of your own: "Not wanted."

Compiled by Olalekan Adeleye

Business Insider

For many years, my mom has been telling herself - and anyone else who will listen - that she’s 45 years old. She’s not actively trying to deceive us (I’m 37, so I’m not falling for it); she’s trying to deceive herself. She’d read somewhere that if you tell yourself you’re a younger age, you’ll start to feel younger.

She swears that lying to yourself is the key to a more youthful life, and science says she might actually be right.

As we get older, most of us feel younger

A 2018 study out of the University of Virginiaof more than 30,000 people showed that once we pass age 25, we tend to think of ourselves as younger than we actually are. And Medical Xpressreports that this discrepancy grows as we get older:

For every decade that passes, people tend to feel that they have only gained five or six years. This is the equivalent to living Martian years as opposed to Earth years.

It turns out that this phenomenon may have rather important implications. A recent surge in research in this area has revealed that the extent to which people feel younger than they are is strongly associated with a whole range of health outcomes. People with a younger subjective age are less likely to suffer from diabetes, hypertension, depression, cognitive impairment and dementia.

If you think of yourself as younger, you may actyounger in ways you don’t even realize, such as by walking faster, exercising more or engaging in activities that increase the grey matter in your brain.

If you feel younger, you’re more likely to live longer

Another study, out of University College London, found that those who thought of themselves as younger had a lower death rate than those who felt their own age or older. Thrive Globalbreaks down the numbers:

UCL researchers invited 6,489 people with an average age of slightly under 66 years to complete questionnaires that asked how they feel about their age. Almost 70% said they felt three or more years younger than their actual age. About 25% had a self-perceived age close to their real age. And about 5% felt more than a year older.

The UCL researchers correlated this data with mortality over the next eight years. Of the people who had felt older, 24% died, versus 18% of those who had felt their age, and 12% who had felt younger. To put it another way, people who felt younger than their actual age had a 50% reduced risk of death, compared to people who felt older.

Chicken vs. egg?

Granted, if you’re already in good health, you probably dofeel younger than someone your own age who has health struggles. So is it mind over body or body over mind? It’s probably a little bit of both; but unlike your true age, you canchange your subjective age.

Healthlinecalls our subjective age “the magic number,” and a “predictor of your physical health, well-being, vitality, and even life expectancy.” And it can fluctuate over time:

Even if that 40 feels like 29 now, your 45 might actually feel like 50. That’s why we’ve got to keep tabs on our subjective age.

Check in with it often. Have you been trying new things, staying active, and paying attention to your overall well-being?

As for my mom, she has herself convinced enough about being in her mid-40s that whenever someone has a legitimate medical or professional reason to ask, she has to stop and calculate her true age.

And when I point out that our eight-year (and shrinking) age difference is starting to feel a little strange, she has an easy solution for me: “So tell yourself you’re 25.”

Compiled by Olalekan Adeleye

Lifehacker

Can taking a philosophy class – more specifically, a class in practical ethics – lead students to act more ethically?

Teachers of practical ethics have an obvious interest in the answer to that question. The answer should also matter to students thinking of taking a course in practical ethics. But the question also has broader philosophical significance, because the answer could shed light on the ancient and fundamental question of the role that reason plays in forming our ethical judgments and determining what we do.

Plato, in the Phaedrus, uses the metaphor of a chariot pulled by two horses; one represents rational and moral impulses, the other irrational passions or desires. The role of the charioteer is to make the horses work together as a team. Plato thinks that the soul should be a composite of our passions and our reason, but he also makes it clear that harmony is to be found under the supremacy of reason.

In the eighteenth century, David Hume argued that this picture of a struggle between reason and the passions is misleading. Reason on its own, he thought, cannot influence the will. Reason is, he famously wrote, “the slave of the passions.”

Hume spoke of “passions” in a wider sense than we understand that term today. Among what he called passions are our fellow-feeling or sympathy for others, and our concern for our own long-term interests. On Hume’s view, what other philosophers take to be a conflict between reason and emotion is really a conflict between these “calm passions” and our more violent and often imprudent passions.

Something like Hume’s view of reason is now influential in contemporary psychology. Jonathan Haidt, author of The Happiness Hypothesisand The Righteous Mind, uses a metaphor reminiscent of Plato, but in support of a view closer to Hume, to illustrate what he calls the social intuitionist perspective on ethics: “The mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant,” he writes on the first page of The Righteous Mind, “and the rider’s job is to serve the elephant.” The rider, in Haidt’s metaphor, is the mental process we control, mainly conscious reasoning, and the elephant is the other 99% of our mental processes, mostly our emotions and intuitions.

Haidt’s research has led him to see moral reasoning largely as post hocrationalization of our automatic, intuitive responses. As a result,he writes, “I therefore became skeptical of direct approaches to fostering ethical behavior – particularly direct teaching in the classroom. We can’t just put moral knowledge into our students’ heads, and expect them to implement that knowledge after they leave the classroom.”

In The Righteous Mind, Haidt draws support for his views from research by the philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel of the University of California, Riverside, and Joshua Rust of Stetson University. On a range of ethical issues, Schwitzgebel and Rust show, philosophy professors specializing in ethics behave no better than professors working in other areas of philosophy; nor are they more ethical than professors who don’t work in philosophy at all. If even professors working in ethics are no more ethical than their peers in other disciplines, doesn’t that support the belief that ethical reasoning is powerless to make people behave more ethically?

Perhaps. Yet, despite the evidence, I am not entirely convinced. I have had a lot of anecdotal evidence that my classes in practical ethics changed the lives of at least some students, and in quite fundamental ways. Some became vegetarian or vegan. Others began donating to help people in extreme poverty in low-income countries, and a few changed their career plans so that they could do more to make the world a better place.

Two years ago, Schwitzgebel offered me an opportunity to test, more rigorously than had ever been done before, whether a class on the ethics of eating meat could change what students eat. Together with Brad Cokelet, a philosophy professor at the University of Kansas, we ran a study involving 1,143 students at the University of California, Riverside. Half the students were required to read a philosophical article defending vegetarianism, followed by a small group discussion with the option of watching a video advocating avoiding meat. The other half were a control group. They received similar materials and discussion on donating to help people in poverty.

We used information from campus dining cards to find out what food purchases the students in the two groups made before and after these classes. We had data on nearly 6,000 food purchases from 476 students. The purchases were identified with students who had, or had not, read and discussed the ethics of eating meat, but the data we received were made anonymous so that we could not identify any named student’s purchases.

The result was a decline, from 52% to 45%, in meat purchases among students in the meat ethics group, and the lower rate of meat purchases was maintained for a few weeks after the class. There was no change in the level of meat purchases in the charitable giving group (and we had no way of discovering whether these students gave more to charity).

Our results are, at this stage, preliminary and have not yet undergone peer review. We are seeking further data on the significance of watching the video – which may have appealed to students’ emotions more than their reason. Nevertheless, to our knowledge, this is the first properly controlled study, in the real world and not in a laboratory setting, of the impact of university-level philosophy classes on student behavior. The decline in meat-eating is not dramatic, but it is statistically significant, and suggests that in some contexts, ethical reasoning in the classroom can change behavior.

Project Syndicate

Nigeria’s entry points are vulnerable, as caches of arms have been discovered by Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) mostly at the ports. Customs in 2017 recorded the seizure of shipments of 2,761 pump action rifles, and it said all the four shipments intercepted from Turkey were false declarations on the bills of landing, showing a case of smuggling.

In January 2018, a container loaded with 49 boxes of 661 pump action arms was intercepted. The rifles were laden in a Mack truck before it was intercepted along Mile 2 Apapa Road, Lagos. Three suspects who were arrested in connection with this illegal importation were: Mr. Oscan Okafor, Importer, Mr. Mahmud Hassan, Clearing Agent and Mr. Sadique Mustapha, who was accompanying the consignment to its destination. Still in 2017, in March, Customs intercepted a container-load of arms and ammunition at a bonded terminal ‘Ports and Cargo Terminal’ of the Tin Can Island Ports. Sources at the Zone A Unit of Customs had said the cargo of 440 guns was shipped in from Turkey. The consignment was earlier declared as white cement. In all, Customs said it seized nearly 4,000 guns in the various operations and catchment of cartridges at its Niger/Kwara/Kogi Command.

Smuggling of arms has been recurring over the years. In October, 2010, crates of weapons including rocket launchers and mortars loaded from Iran were seized in Nigeria. However, the French shipping group, CMA CGM, said it had been the victim of a false cargo declaration and that the weapons and ammunitions were in sealed containers which had been declared as “packages of glass wool and pallets of stone.”

The French shipping firm said the shipper had requested that the containers be re-loaded and shipped to Gambia, further round the West African coast, and that it had obtained customs documents and clearance for the voyage.

The arms were intercepted in 13 containers in Lagos containing rocket launchers, grenades and other explosives and ammunition.

At that time, Israeli media reports, citing Israeli defense officials, have suggested the weapons may have been destined for Hamas Islamists in Gaza and that a new smuggling route was being tested. Israel says its arch-foe Iran bankrolls attempts to ship weapons to the Gaza Strip by sea or land routes. Iran said its support for Hamas was diplomatic only.

The seizure came weeks after car bombs killed at least 10 people near an Independence Day parade in the capital Abuja on October 1.

There have been concerns over widespread illegal arms across the country. 

National Task Force to combat illegal importation, smuggling of goods, small arms, ammunition and light-weapons, (NATFORCE), said the proliferation of small arms and light weapons is one of the major security challenges currently facing Nigeria, Africa and indeed the world in general. This was contained in a submission by it Director-General, Mr Osita Okereke, to the National Assembly to ratify a bill for a National Commission for the Prohibition of all illegal importation of Small Arms, Ammunitions and Light Weapons.

According to him, trafficking and wide availability of these weapons fuel communal conflicts, political instability and pose a threat, not only to national security, but also to sustainable development.

He pointed out that “the widespread proliferation of small arms is contributing to alarming levels of armed crime and militancy” and there is an urgent need to ratify the bill for the establishment of the Commission.

“The need for the timely passage of this bill by the 9th National Assembly cannot be overemphasized considering the present realities in our dear country,” Okereke said. Okereke explained that the bill, when passed and signed by the president, will bring to an end illegal arms proliferation as well as incessant banditry and kidnapping in the country. He however regretted that the inability of successive National Assemblies to pass the bill for the establishment of the Commission is hampering efforts of the organization and expressed optimism that the 9th National Assembly would accord the bill the seriousness it deserves.

The bill is in conformity with 2006 ECOWAS Convention on Small Arms and Light Weapons and would address the problem of proliferation.

Some of the functions of the proposed Commission include: Promoting removal of arms from society through the collection, storage, destruction, management and stockpiling of small arms and light weapons; Controlling the manufacture of small arms and light weapons by monitoring and regulating activities of the local arms manufacturers; Registration of small arms and light weapons as well as arms used in peacekeeping operations; updating the register of small arms and light weapons before transmitting same to ECOWAS, African Union (AU) and United Nations (UN), establishing programmes of action to prevent, combat and eradicate the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons, and sensitizing the public on the need to submit illegally-held small arms and light weapons to security services.

Daily Trust

In the light of worsening unemployment, increasing poverty, and heightened insecurity in Nigeria, particularly in Ogun State, governorship candidate of YES Party, Mr Sina Kawonise, has urged Ogun residents not to despair.

In a statement to mark this year’s Christmas celebrations, signed by Director of SK Media Office, Mr Doyin Owobamirin, Kawonise, while congratulating Ogun residents for being alive to witness another Christmas, encouraged the people to be of good cheers as help is on the way.

According to Kawonise, a former commissioner for Information in Ogun State, “our people should not despair but live in the great hope that the coming 2019, the election year, when we’ll have the opportunity to elect competent, credible and God-fearing leaders to pilot the affairs of government, will change the narrative of negativities of our lives for the better.”

“This season of goodwill presents us an opportunity to reflect on how we got to the current sorry pass where the least qualified among us emerged to bear rule over us. With the opportunity to choose new leaders through our votes, we as a people must look for competent, capable and God-fearing ones among those canvassing for votes to give the mandate of leadership to.

“Experience has taught us that those who take advantage of the poverty in the land and induce our people with materials things procured with ill-gotten wealth, turn out to be purveyors of the bad governance that presses our people deeper into poverty, misery and insecurity.”

Kawonise, therefore, enjoins residents of Ogun State to shun vote selling in the coming elections and choose credible candidates which YES Party presents as its flag-bearers in all the electoral offices.

While wishing Ogun residents a Merry Christmas, the statement concludes by assuring the people that God has heard the cries of the suffering masses and Has raised for them, through YES Party, new crop of leaders who’ll do His will in service delivery to the people and righteousness in the land.

Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has revealed the process it will adopt for voting in 2019 general elections.

A national commissioner of the commission, Mr Festus Okoye, made the disclosure on Wednesday while speaking to journalists at a two-day election workshop at U.S embassy in Abuja.

Okoye, who is also Chairman of Information and Voter Education in the commission, spoke on INEC’s expectations from the media as regards coverage of elections and reporting of results.

He said the voting procedure will be in accordance with Continuous Accreditation and Voting System (CAVS) and only voters with permanent voter’s cards verified by the smart card reader would be allowed to vote.

“Each voter shall cast his/her vote in person at the polling unit that he/she registered and, in the manner, prescribed by the Commission.

“For the purposes of the conduct of elections, the Commission utilizes both permanent and ad-hoc staff. The ad-hoc staff comprises of Presiding Officers (PO), Assistant Presiding Officers (APO), Supervisors, Collation Officers and Returning Officers.

“The Presiding Officer shall be responsible for regulating the admission of voters to the polling unit and shall exclude all other persons except candidates or their polling agents, election officials, security personnel, accredited observers and any other person who in his opinion has lawful reason to be admitted and attendance Register in Polling Unit booklet will be signed by these categories of election personnel,” he said.

Mr Okoye stated those who will be allowed access to the electoral material distribution centre, polling units, polling stations and collation centres.

These are “the voters (at polling units only), INEC officials on election duty, security personnel, candidates or their accredited party agents, accredited journalists/media and accredited domestic and foreign observers.

“The accreditation process shall comprise Verification by the Smart Card Reader; Checking of the Register of Voters; and inking of the cuticle of the specified finger. Where the voter’s fingerprint is not authenticated after 4 attempts using the SCR, the APOI shall recapture the fingerprint of the voter in the prescribed manner and continue with the accreditation and voting process.

“Where the voter authentication fails after recapture, the APO shall refer the voter to the Presiding Officer who shall examine and ascertain if the PVC belongs to the voter and if satisfied, that it belongs to the voter and that the voter has not been previously verified, direct the voter to the APOII for Register check and inking to continue with other accreditation and voting process.”

Mr Okoye also said accredited media organisations and observers will be allowed into the polling units, collation centres and distribution centres.

“However, it is not permissible to violate the secrecy of the vote by attempting to record how a voter is voting or how the voter has voted. Section 125 of the Electoral Act.

“The media are allowed or permitted to record and use the votes scores by each political party as pasted in the Publication of Result Poster EC60(E). The media and accredited observers are not allowed or permitted to make a declaration or announce results of an election as that is legally reserved for the Returning Officer who makes a declaration and a return.

“By section 123(4) of the Electoral Act, 2010(as amended) any person who announces or publishes an election result knowing same to be false or which is at variance with the signed certificate of return commits an offence and is liable on conviction to 36 months’ imprisonment,” he said.

Further guidelines are:

At the close of voting, the PO shall:

-Cancel all the unused ballot papers by crossing them.

-Sort out the ballot papers by party and thereafter loudly count the votes scored by each political party in the presence of the polling agents and observers.

-Cross-check the scores according to the prescribed procedure.

-Enter the scores of the candidates in both figures and words in the appropriate forms EC8A/ EC8A(VP) series.

Where voting points have been created the APO shall:

-Enter the result on form EC8A (VP).

-Submit to the presiding officer who shall consolidate the result using form EC8A and attach the EC8A(VP) to form EC8A.

The Presiding Officer shall then:

-Sign, date and stamp the appropriate EC8A forms;

-Announce loudly the votes scored by each political party;

-Request the candidates or their polling agents where available at the polling unit to countersign;

-Keep the originals of EC8 series and the first pink copies for the Commission;

-Give to the party agents and the Police, a duplicate copy each of the completed forms;

-Post the completed Publication of Result Poster EC60(E) at the polling unit;

-Complete the EC40H(1) for PWD Information and Statistics;

-Complete the PWD information boxes in the PU booklet;

-Electronically transmit the result in the prescribed manner;

-Take the card reader and the original copy of the forms in tamper-evidence envelope to the Registration Area/Ward Collation Officer, in the company of security agents.

The polling agents may accompany the Presiding Officer to RA/Ward Collation Centre as stipulated in Sections 62-67 of the Electoral Act, 2010(as amended)

Where the total number of votes cast at a polling unit exceeds the number of registered voters in the polling unit, the result of the election for that polling unit shall be declared null and void, and a report in that regard is made to the Collation Officer.

Similarly, where the total number of votes cast at a polling unit exceeds the total number of accredited voters, the outcome of the election shall be declared null and void, and a report in that regard is made to the Collation officer.

The collation and declaration of election results shall be done at the following levels depending on the type of election:

-Registration Area – RA/Ward (collation for all election) including that of Councilor in the case of the FCT.

-Local Government Area – LGA (Collation for all election) including that of Chairman in the case of the FCT.

-State Constituency (Collation and Declaration of State House of Assembly elections).

-Federal Constituency (Collation and Declaration of House of Representative elections)

-Senatorial District (Collation and declaration of Senatorial District elections)

-Governorship (Collation and Declaration of Governorship elections)

-Presidential (Collation and Declaration of Presidential election) as stipulated in Section 27 of the Electoral Act, 2010(as amended).

While the announcement of results is made at the Polling Units by the Presiding Officer, the Ward Collation Officer announces the Results at the Ward Collation Centre and the Local Government or Area Council Collation Officer announces the result at the Local Government or Area Council Collation Centre.

By section 63 of the Electoral Act, 2010 (as amended) what the Presiding Officer does is to count and announce the result at the polling unit. The Presiding Officer does not make a declaration and does not make a return.

Section 69 and 70 of the Electoral Act, 2010(as amended) gives the appropriate Returning Officer the exclusive right and jurisdiction to make a return in an election to the office of the President or Governor whether or not contested.

PT

In John Milton’s Paradise Lost, we see Lucifer the Great Deceiver banished from Heaven. In Dante’s Inferno, Satan is presented as a ghastly Beast. In Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, Satan is a pathetic collector of souls. What about the dark ones in Nigerian politics? When you consider the characteristics of Lucifer and Satan in Milton, Dante, and in Marlowe, if Lucifer, Satan, or the Beast had a political party, definitely it would be APC or PDP.

APC and PDP candidates are contesting for 2019 presidential elections. This is the fifth time PDP will contest for the presidency after uninterrupted 16 years hold on Nigeria. After four miserable and wasted years of APC, the party wants to be back.

Nigerians should see the coming back of both parties with surge of ancient evils and the great inferno. Nigerians should be hell scared of both parties. It’s up to Nigerians to elect a Lucifer President or President of the People. A president elected on the platform of APC or PDP will be disastrous for Nigeria. It will usher in potential greater eternal suffering in a torture chamber for Nigerians.

Consider the dangers of a President Lucifer. There will be no jobs. Jobs for the army of our unemployed youths will remain a ticking time bomb ready to go off any time. Our young men and women will remain endangered species. Our civilization will be overtaken by barbarity and brutish living. The rule of law will vanish. Boko Haram will multiply and metastasized its cells. Poverty indices will tip the threshold in human history. Corruption will flourish like never before. There will be guaranteed evil without interference. Ethnic and religious bigotry will assume a new dimension sanctioned by the government. Opponents and critics against hatred and hostility will be silenced and subdued.

Hell’s history has been full of political choices. This time in Nigeria is no different, and 2019 will be a turning point in our troubled and trampled democracy. By electing a Lucifer President, Nigerians will hand over their fates to unrelenting and unrepentant oppressors who have vowed to maintain endless torment of manifest wickedness.

Choosing either APC or PDP in 2019 means choosing darkness over light, violence over peace, poverty over abundance, hatred over love, blindness over vision, despair over hope. Just imagine with your last gasp of your humanity to consider being governed by Constitution of Satanic Verses of either APC or PDP and try to negotiate your life through eons of horror and terror.

If by rigging, Nigeria is governed by either APC or PDP in 2019, corruption, avarice, greed, wickedness, fear, insecurity, killings, will take over the land with total disregard for human suffering. Right now, Nigeria is ruled by injustice and at best selective justice. With APC or PDP at the helm in 2019, injustice, jungle justice, manufactured injustice will be our natural and constitutional law. Violence will be legitimized. Dictatorship will find a safe haven. Anarchy will be enthroned. Our children will have panic attacks, they won’t be able to sleep, they’ll regress developmentally due to malnutrition, family problems, and unsafe environment. Where they might have been verbal, they’ll no longer talk. A blank, empty, and hopeless future awaits them.

APC and PDP wield a dangerous amnesia towards Nigeria’s history of leadership vacuum. Under APC or PDP, Nigeria as a rudderless country will continue to grope in the dark and in the wilderness. Both parties are stinkingly corrupt. Membership of both parties is based on exchange of one thief for another. Both parties are revolving doors for criminals, scammers, scoundrels and scalawags. Both parties thrive on violence, unrest, bad governance willfully with impunity.

You ain’t seeing nothing yet. Wait till any of the two parties take over Aso Rock in 2019. It’s going to be an onslaught that will paralyze us as a nation and as a people. We must refuse and reject this reality – brazen allegiance to insanity – that the two parties hold dearly. Both parties have dismantled our hopes and disbanded our collective aspirations. We’ve been raped, violated, victimized, and persecuted. Atiku’s coming back and of course Buhari’s is dictated by blind necessity. It is insulting the sensibilities of Nigerians for Atiku and PDP to stage a comeback. Atiku and PDP are defined by ascendancy of corruption. Atiku has no moral compass about leadership and governance. He’s like a great white shark, a scandal must be fed, or it sinks to the bottom and dies. Atiku’s page scandal has not had the full scrutiny. This is the best time – election season – to unearth the buried skeletons in his corruption grave.

Buhari has turned Nigeria into the poverty capital of the world. Uncommon power has combined with uncommon greed to create immense deceptions and losses for Nigerians. Under Buhari, the humiliating daily headlines of corruption crises stemming from treasury looting by public officials and his kitchen cabinet seem cruel to recall.

Human behavior is regulated by many factors – moral standards, the sense of shame, of conscience, of duty, and of service. Both candidates – Atiku and Buhari – have none. Nigerians, you have been warned enough. As a people, you still have enough time to plan your escape route before 2019. Flee from a Lucifer President!

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More than 84 million Nigerians are eligible to vote in next year’s general election, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman, Mr Mahmoud Yakubu said yesterday.

He spoke when he received a delegation of African Union (AU).

The continental organisation promised to provide full support to INEC during 2019 general elections. The team was led by Mr Musa Faki Mahamad.

Yakubu, said the commission had carried out the observations and recommendations the Union made after 2015 elections.

“Your visit is coming exactly 113 days to the elections in Nigeria scheduled for Saturday February 16, 2019.

“In response, and for the first time in the history of elections in Nigeria, INEC conducted Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) from April 27, 2017 to August 31, 2018 during which some 14.5 million new voters were registered in addition to about 70 million voters registered before 2015 General Elections.

“This brings the total number of registered voters in Nigeria today to well over 84 million. We have also systematically printed and made available PVCs for collection by citizens in batches well ahead of 2019 General Elections.

“The last batch of PVC will be available for collection in early December and collection will continue until at least one week to 2019 General Elections.

The Nation

Director of Foreign and Diaspora Affairs of Social Democratic Party (SDP), Mr Godwin Duru, said the party had been hijacked by cabals.

Duru, a member of a break-away faction of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), otherwise known as Fresh PDP, said he was no longer comfortable with the state of affairs in SDP.

He had moved to SDP together with former national chairmanship aspirant, Mr Tunde Adeniran, and former Minister of Information, Mr Jerry Gana, among others.

Duru contested National Organising Secretary position at the convention, but lost.

In his letter of resignation to the SDP National Chairman, Mr Olu Falae, he alleged that members of National Working Committee (NWC) of the party had turned themselves into political merchants, to manipulate the due process for undue quest for money.

He further alleged that the impunity, imposition of candidates and corruption which characterised PDP are the current practice in SDP.

Duru told journalists that Falae has lost control of the party, and accused a member of the party’s NWC of running SDP like a private estate.

Although he refused to declare for any political party, he praised the conduct of PDP presidential primary in Port Harcourt, where the party’s presidential candidate emerged.

He was, however, quick to point out that such would not have been possible if Fresh PDP had not protested against the conduct of the December 2017 National Convention.

Duru dismissed the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by about 40 political parties to oust President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019 as unworkable.

He said Osun rerun governorship election, where SDP candidate, Mr Iyola Omisore, worked for candidate of All Progressives Congress (APC) against PDP candidate, Mr Ademola Adeleke, was an indication that the coalition had collapsed.

“What a serious political party would have done was to move in immediately and protect the candidate and make sure the coalition works.

“But, they didn’t do that, and what happened? Omisore abandoned the coalition and accepted to work with APC,” Duru said.

Sun