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INEC/Jega Nwayo Nwayo; Make Haste Slowly – By Chief Nwosu ADC Chairman

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RALPHS-OKEY-NWOSU
RALPHS-OKEY-NWOSU

Below is the presentation given by the national chairman of ADC Chief Ralphs Okey Nwosu during the INEC and National Chairmen and Secretaries of political parties Consultative meeting at the INEC conference room today the 12th of March, 2015.

The security agencies saved our democracy.

On Saturday the 7th of February, 2015, in this INEC headquarters conference hall, the national chairmen of registered political parties met with INEC to add their voice to that of the National Council of State and INEC concerning the 2015 election time table. The National Security Advisor had earlier raised an alarm on the nation’s preparedness for the elections scheduled for the 14th and 28th of February. The security agencies reported that they needed six weeks to ensure security before the election could hold. As a result, the elections were shifted to the 28th of March and 11th of April respectively. This provided a strategic opportunity for the management of INEC. What has happened within the last four weeks shows clearly that INEC, the election management body, would not have been ready for the election had they held as earlier planned. Even as at today, I am not sure all the electronic card readers and PVCs have arrived in the country. What I do know is that Senator Kelani, a presidential candidate and the national chairman of Action Alliance AA, who is seated in this meeting with us, Chief Anayo Arinze, the National Publicity Secretary of my party ADC, five ADC state Chairmen, 23 members of our state executive councils, and a good number of our members for no fault of theirs are among the 20 percent of eligible voters nationwide who do not yet have their PVCs as at today. I read in the papers last week that the commission was still expecting about one million PVC cards from China, and some thousands extra electronic card readers. The test run of the electronic gadgets was conducted only days back with visible hiccups.

I doubt that anyone attending this INEC consultative meeting with National Chairmen and Secretaries of political parties today still believes that the country was ready for the election in mid February.  If the presidential and national assembly elections had been held as earlier planned, the outcome would have embarrassed the nation and could have signposted the end of this hard earned democracy. Luckily our disciplined, professional, and democratic security men and women provided a shield for us. I must say that we need to appreciate them for this.

Let truth be said, INEC needs to do better.  

For some strange reasons the idea of interim government has continued to echo. It was Pastor Tunde Bakare who boldly voiced his fears about it while others only whispered. I guess he did so in order to make all the stakeholders including INEC to sit up. President Jonathan has at various fora spoken against the concept of interim government; he has described it as illegal and unacceptable. But the whispers refused to go away. I can now see clearly what Bakare had perhaps foreseen. The truth is that if we had held the election 33 days ago, the outcry and confusion from millions of eligible voters who would have been disenfranchised due to the unresolved PVC challenge and ECR malfunction could have resulted in either interim government (lesser evil) or a coup (worse evil) or even something more sinister. Given this antecedent, Nigerians are naturally slow to accept that the PVC and ECR are the magic wands that will ensure electoral credibility in Nigeria. While electoral reform is good in itself, a phased transition that allows for adequate piloting of the new technology before nationwide intervention would be wise. INEC needs to make provision for adequate back-up methods of voter accreditation in the event of a failure of the new system.  I therefore call on all well meaning patriots to join in cautioning INEC that our nationhood does not start and end with this single election. Professor Jega hankali hankali, suru suru, nwayo nwayo; let’s make progress slowly. Nation building is not a one day or one election affair.

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INEC/JEGA Fact File:  Professor Jega says that sections 78 and 118 of the constitution grants INEC powers to register voters and conduct elections in Nigeria. He cites that card readers were used in Ghana, Kenya and Sierra Leone. He further states that the device which is very handy, works like the Point of Sale (PoS) machine, and that it can work for 12 consecutive hours when fully charged. He said it is embedded with a SIM card for all the major telecommunication networks in the country and is connected to a central server which will receive the data of the number of people accredited at a given polling booth. He said accreditation will take place between 8am to 1pm after which a button would be pressed on the device to transmit the data of verified voters to the central server. According to him, the PVC is embedded with a chip which if inserted into the device will display a voter’s biometric data after which the finger print would be taken to complete the process.

Might is not Right; Jega says that the constitution empowers him to register voters and conduct elections, and he is doing so. Great but Jega should however take wise counsel. We should note that the total numbers of voters in the three countries cited by Professor Jega put together are not up to half of the voters in Nigeria. The said countries deployed the machines after satisfactory test runs and wining the confidence of all parties involved; even at that they had serious challenges. Secondly, it is important for the commission to be aware that the constitution gives franchise to any Nigeria citizen aged 18 years and above living in Nigeria to vote, and that any exclusionist process by INEC is offensive to the constitution. For justice, fairness, and credibility, the Independent National Electoral Commission must create room to accommodate all eligible voters.

PVC Quagmire:  INEC has made serious efforts to get more PVCs distributed within the window provided by the extension. However, on Monday March, 9th INEC announced that “PVC collection which was to end on March 8th will continue until March 22nd…….this would be the last opportunity for duly registered persons who have yet to collect their PVCs to do so before elections scheduled for March 28 and April 11.” The truth is that some 18 million eligible voters do not have PVCs and most of them have experienced repeated difficulties obtaining theirs. We have met variously with INEC in this hall and they have told us that it is impossible to produce the PVCs for duly registered persons whose PVCs have been omitted for various reasons. We are aware from the field that some of our constituents have been up and about in search of PVCs and cannot find theirs. What happens to these people? Why can’t they vote with the temporary voting cards (TVC) that some of them used in Osun, Ekiti, Edo, Anambra etc just few months ago?

Electronic Card Readers (ECR): INEC first imported 180,000 ECR, and later reordered another 20,000. The card readers were tested on Wednesday the 22nd of February in the Senate Chambers. Another test took place in some select wards in 12 states on the 7th of March. The outcome of the ECR tests show that it recorded an average time of 1 minute per person, but had a hitch with the biometrics in 41% cases according to INEC. The exercise was carried out in Lagos, Ekiti, Anambra, Ebonyi, Taraba, Bauchi and Kano. Other states where mock accreditation exercise took place were Kebbi, Delta and Rivers States. From media reports, Lagos, where the process of authentication lasted between 60 seconds and two minutes, recorded the best result with card readers. The failure of biometric confirmation of potential voters was higher in the North. In some states, the machines’ batteries went down after barely three hours of operation. I witnessed that of Anambra state where I come from; the mock accreditation was conducted at Igboukwu Ward 1. The card reader failed to recognize the biometrics of about 50% of those that turned up, and it took between 20 seconds and 4 minutes for the card readers to clear some of the voters who appeared for the mock testing. The battery of two of the machines ran down after attending to about 37 persons.

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The outcome of the mock testing clearly shows that INEC needs to exercise caution in using the ECR for this election; for election so critical even 10% error will cause crisis. The ECR is similar to the Point of Sale (POS) terminals being used by the banking system in Nigeria. As reported by Ademola Alawiye of the Punch Newspapers on June 3rd 2013, “About seventy-five per cent of the POS deployed for the cash-less Lagos initiative of the Central Bank of Nigeria are inactive, this translates to 112,500 inactive terminals out of the total 150,000 deployed in Lagos, and their state of inactivity, according to findings, is due to poor connectivity and downtime.” Simon Ejembi, also of the Punch corroborates “Despite an increase in the number of POS terminals and Nigerians showing willingness to use the channel for business transactions, poor network service remains a challenge”. A look at the practical experience of operating the POS system on a large scale gives us a hint of what could be expected with the use of INEC’s gsm-brand ECR model in nationwide elections. While the gadgets such as the POS and ECR serve a useful purpose, they are prone to network, human, technical, and operational challenges which could cripple our election.

Against this background, the insistence on using ECR and PVC in the Presidential elections is a highly questionable decision. INEC had conducted gubernatorial elections within the past year in Anambra, Ekiti and Osun States, and a number of smaller constituency elections across the country. This electronic gadget and PVC should have been applied as a pilot during one or more of these elections, and the experience used to fine tune the process before rolling it out at the level of a nationwide poll intended to capture 60million votes. Deploying over two hundred thousand electronic card readers and expecting everything to go well, especially after a mini test run has proved otherwise, is invitation for trouble. Why the grandstanding, why is the commission being obstinate?

Yours in service of Fatherland,

Chief Ralphs Okey Nwosu;                                                                                                                             Ikolo Dike Orabueze Awka, Ochenkwu Oraka Isiagu, Akachukwu Urum,                                              National Chairman African Democratic Congress ADC                                                                                       -Our task is not to foresee the future, but to enable it. Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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