Card Reader technology by the Independent National Electoral
Commission, INEC, has been insinuated into the usual Nigerian malaise
of doubt and distrust. Making the wrong arguments - and worse still,
suggesting that they do not want the device to be used for the
forthcoming general elections - members and leaders of the ruling
Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, are expressing fears about the use to
which the devices would be put.
Conversely, the opposition All Progressive Congress, APC, appears
confident in the belief that only the Card Reader can deliver free,
fair and credible elections. Yet, Professor Attahiru Jega, the INEC
Chairman, must accept responsibility and blame for the shambling and
shambolic air that is presently generating the hoopla. This report
will show that Jega's position that INEC was ready to go ahead and
conduct elections on February 14, 2015, when virtually all indices
pointed in the negative direction, as well as the wrong-headed
insistence by leaders of the APC that the elections should go ahead,
makes an attenuating case for the accommodation of the fears of the
PDP.
Carrying out a test-run only yesterday, some three clear weeks after
the fraud that would have been passed off as elections in February,
this report will conclude that Jega and his Commission would need to
come clean and not waste time, resources and goodwill that Nigerians
have dissipated in the belief that free, fair and credible elections
are about to be conducted.
JUST IMAGINE
N5million! And the promise of a fabulous job once the votes are
delivered and the election has been won. Those are the promises made
to the Presiding Officer and the Electoral Officer for
Janduku/Barawo/Onyeshi LGA. All they are required to do is to allow
the use of stolen Permanent Voter Cards, PVCs, in the possession of an
influential politician. Attahiru Jega, INEC Chairman, has made the
proposition possible.
How? He has created a window for crooked politicians and dishonest
INEC officials that would be on duty on the day of election. In a
polity of clashing socio-political, economic and religious interests
that Nigeria has become, every contest for power is seen from the
prism of either a North/South divide or a Christian/Muslim interest.
Now, by Jega's choice, cold water has been poured on his pursuit to
deliver free, fair and credible elections to Nigerians. His
introduction of the Smart Card Reader represented a watershed in the
nation's quest to transit from the sphere of crooked elections to the
refreshing environment of a free, fair and credible process. The
acknowledged, single most important security feature of the Card
Reader is the biometrics, the thumb-print, which is very unique to
every individual. This ensures that even in the event that PVC is
presented to an INEC official on voting day and the biometrics of the
individual does not match the one on the PVC, it suggests that
something is amiss.
THE DEVIL IN THE SCHEME
But Jega's window, which circumvents this security feature, is that an
INCIDENT FORM would be provided by the INEC official to be filled by
the individual concerned after which he can then be certified to vote.
Having promised Nigerians that the biometrics is a security feature
that cannot be broken since it is unique to every individual,
analysts, who spoke to Sunday Vanguard at the weekend, feared that,
allowing a situation whereby the selfsame INEC has put in place a
window to sabotage the process amounts to a gratuitous waste of tax
payers' money and time.
The scenario painted above - of the INEC officials who have been given
money and promised better jobs if they deliver - is what may
predominate on the day of election as this report would demonstrate.
This could be so because most of those who have either stolen or have
been given PVCs in their thousands only need a few crooked INEC staff
with Card Readers and INCIDENT FORMS aplenty.
And since the onus of proof is on the loser to determine that the
victor that emerged at an election did not emerge freely and fairly,
it would become a Herculean task to prove that an election is not
free, fair and credible - Nigeria's electoral laws are skewed against
the loser who carries the burden of discharging the extent of fraud
that was allegedly committed at an election.
--Read more at Vanguard:
t.co/jQbCl7zBy1
No comments:
Post a Comment