Why INEC Should Declare Victory And Go Manual Now

By

Mobolaji E. Aluko, PhD

alukome@gmail.com

Burtonsville, MD, USA

November 22, 2006

How I Got My INEC Voter Registration Card in Nigeria

On Friday, November 17, I drove from Abuja to my home-town Ode-Ekiti, arriving there at about 2:00 pm after a nerve-wracking, bone-breaking five-and-a-half hour journey through very bad roads.   Even the two-lane Okene-Omuo-Ifaki-Ado federal road that used to be fairly superb the last time that I went on it - even with a detour through Ode - is now severely pock-marked at places too numerous to count.   The only event competing with the pock-marks was the number of police road-blocks and road safety people that I encountered along the way –maybe something like twenty!  

At one point just outside Lokoja, my car was stopped for sporting "extra front lights" in front against traffic policy.   When I stated that the lights were not on – at least it was broad daylight - and offered to unscrew the lights right there and then, the   lady head road safety officer refused, and after shuffling for a few minutes, she seized my driver's driver's license, and I was told that it would be returned only after paying N2000 fine in an office in Lokoja.   My driver confidentially told me that if we paid them N500 bribe, everything would be fine, but I refused.  I guess that he is paying his fine right now in Lokoja as I speak – at least I gave him N2000 to do so -   because he was due to return through Lokoja today to pick up his license after my trip back to the US through Abuja.  [I leant from my driver later on that he knew that the extra lights were a violation, but he had forgotten to detach them on his journey.   Apparently, the violation is not taken seriously inside Abuja or Akure; only along the highway!]

Anyway, after finally making it to Ode-Ekiti, I headed first to the Gbonyin Local Government Council office there to say "hello" to the Chairman and other councilors, only to "meet their   absence" in local parlance.  They were all in Ado-Ekiti parleying in preparation for PDP ward congresses that was to hold the following day November 18.   I finally found the Secretary to the Local Government – an unelected civil servant – and the first thing I asked him was whether there were any INEC registration centers and/or machines in the vicinity.   "Oti o,! I have not seen any in Gbonyin," he said.   Heartbroken, I next went to the Oba of my town to pay obeisance (we are related on my maternal grand-mother's side), and after discussing some local and state politics, etc., he also confided that he had not been registered.

Next port of call was my family's compound at Ilakoto to visit my home folks, to their utter surprise since they were not expecting me at all.   The final call was to my favored party chieftain in the town – to pick up my party card that I had ordered ahead of time.   Missing him at one port, it was while going to his possible other watering hole that we arrived upon a clutter of about thirteen people gathered around a machine under a tree in Ward III of Ode-Ekiti:   it was an INEC VOTER REGISTRATION MACHINE !

To me, it was like a thirsty man in a desert upon seeing an oasis!  I immediately came down from my car, and boldly told the operators that no Jupiter would prevent me from registering,   whether it was my ward or not (it turned out to be my ward.)   Of course, I whipped my digital camera out, and my driver instantly became my photo-chronicler.

Out of the thirteen  people that I met there, about five were INEC-engaged Youth Corpers (three from Imo State, one from Anambra State, one from Oyo State), three were local INEC officials, and the rest were local onlookers.

Curiously, there was no queue, so I immediately gave all my information – name, Ode-Ekiti address, date of birth and age, but when the issue of "Occupation" was arrived at, I said "Professor", the lady taking the information wrote down "Others."   I said "Aha – what occupation is "others?", whereupon she said that the only four occupations accepted by the system are "Farmer", "Artisan", "Public/Civil Servant" and "Other".   I was forced to accept Public/Civil Servant.  One of the INEC officials MANUALLY entered my personal information on a document after taking an imprint of my left (or was it my right?) thumb, while one of the Youth Corpers used a stylus on a hand-held device to enter the same information electronically.  

My one-hour ordeal of waiting had begun – and I have pictures to back me up all the way.

I stuck myself in front of the machine's camera, and after a click,  I was also asked to imprint both my right and left hand thumbs so that an electronic impression could be recorded.   I then thought I had five or so more minutes to wait to collect my laminated card. 

"For where"!  I waited and waited, and during the period interviewed virtually all the people waiting around.   For example, I found out that this was the third day of registration;   that INEC had registered 100 people the first day Wednesday;   50 people the second day Thursday; but that they were not having too much luck on that particular Friday.  I also found out all the universities that the five Youth Corpers attended.   One lovely lady graduated from Madonna University in Orkija – and I promptly showed her my picture (in my digital camera) that I took in July in front of her university.   The Youth Corper from Rivers State was asked by me (tongue in cheek) whether he was from "Diobu" (that name was imprinted in my brain when I did six months of summer work in Port Harcourt environs in the late 70s), to which he said he was Andoni.   Thinking that he said "Ndoni", I said "Oh, that is where Governor Odili is from", but he said "No, I am Ogoni from Andoni, but Odili is Igbo from Ndoni."

I shook my head in understanding, while the Youth Corper from Imo State intoned that he thought all along that Odili was Ikwerre, to which I assertively said "No" after a thorough education in Ikwerre-Igbo-Odili affairs on the Internet.

Meanwhile, my card was having problems coming out of INEC's machine.  I now noticed that the lady Youth corper operating the hand-held device piled on two pure-water sachets onto the device.   When I asked her what she was doing, she said that periodically, the device needed cooling, and they had found from experience that putting those sachets onto it made it spring back to life!     This innovative use of pure-water sachets was quite amusing to me,  and the female Youth Corper firmly assured me that it worked all the time.

But it wasn't quite working until one of the INEC officials went away for some time to get a very cold pure-water sachet, and the device indeed sprung back to life!   I was asked to once again stay in front of the camera;  a new picture was taken;  and in about 20 minutes I got my card, after a total of about one hour !

Yes, so that is how I got my INEC card, VIN Number 101…..106 (eleven digits total), which I have been proudly showing to all and sundry, both in Nigeria and abroad.   I must confess that the picture on the card is not sufficiently clear to make me reliably identifiable from it – somebody else could argue that they were me on that card!

By the way, is this voter-registration picture-taking not an avenue for a National photo-identification Card, a notion that the country has been struggling with all of these years?   If successfully done – with clearer pictures of course - can these Voter Cards not double as ID cards?  Or more importantly, could those who have already received National ID cards not now be asked to present them as Voter-Registration cards, thereby making them automatically have become registered voters?

Inquiring minds want to know – and it is something to think about.

Some Dates of Note

INEC has fixed the following dates for 2006:

(i)                  April 14, 2007:  Gubernatorial and State Assembly Elections;

(ii)                April 21, 2007:  National Assembly and Presidential Elections

With respect to registration therefore, according to the Electoral Act 2006, six dates are important:

(i)                  December 15, 2006:   120 days before Gubernatorial/State Assembly Election Day:   Registration of voters that will vote must be done not later than 120 days before this election day [Section 10(5) of Electoral Act 2006…..but  registration must continue [since it is continuous; Section 10(1)]   

(ii)                December 22, 2006:   120 days before Presidential/State Assemblies Election Day: Registration of voters that will vote not must be done not later than 120 days before this election day [Section 10(5)]…..but  registration must continue.

(iii)               February 13, 2007:   60 days before GENERAL ELECTION - Not later than 60 days before GENERAL ELECTION, supplementary voters' list shall be integrated with the voters' register and published [Section 21]   

(iv)              March 1, 2007: Within 60 days after the beginning of each calendar year: INEC must make names, addresses of all registered persons during 2006 (or previous year) available to every political party [Section 11(1)(b)]   

(v)                March 24, 2007: 14 days before Gubernatorial/State Assembly Elections Day    - INEC shall publish  (a) day/hours fixed for poll (b) people entitled to vote; and  (c) location of polling stations.  [See Section 47] 

(vi)              March 31, 2007:   14 days before Presidential/National Assembly Elections Day - INEC shall publish  (a) day/hours fixed for poll  (b) people entitled to vote; and (c) location of polling stations.  [See Section 47]

It is interesting to note that of these six dates,  ONLY the last two dates – March 24 and March 31, 2007, - have been recorded on the " Time Table of Activities and Schedule for the 2007 General Elections" made available by INEC's Chairman on INEC's website reproduced in Table 1 below. 

INEC, the political parties and election-related NGOs should note these serious omissions.

The  Moral of the Tale of Slow Registration

From the above dates, the first deadline that INEC is working with with respect to registration is December 15, 2006,   but the first substantive date which should not be violated is the February 13, 2007 date when the supplementary voters' list (obtained from December 15 2006 onwards) must be integrated with the voters' register (obtained until December 15, 2006) and published.   The next serious one is March 1, 2007, when within 60 days after the beginning of each calendar year, INEC is required to make the names, addresses of all registered persons during 2006 (or previous year) available to every political party.

It is these dates that we must use to assess INEC's present registration efforts.

A lot has been made that of the fact that 33,000 machines were ordered through three companies (one indigenous, two foreign) by INEC; ordered so that out of the 120,000 polling stations, there will be one machine for each four stations; that only 1,000 had been delivered to date;   that that is why to date only about 1.5 million people (out of an estimate of 60 million voters) have been registered so far since the major exercise preliminarily began on October 7, continued but in full-scale on October 25, and is now scheduled to end December 15.; and finally that 10,000 additional machines have now been received within the past few days.

That means that at the present rate of registration at about 50,000 persons per 1000 machines per day, by about December 15, with 11,000 machines, a total of 17.5 million people – or one-quarter of estimated voter size - might be registered.  If by February 13, 2007, no additional machines are made available, then probably 28.5 million people would be registered, and 61.5 million people on the eve of the Gubernatorial/State Assembly Elections of April 14, 2007.  However, if by January 1, 2007, ALL  30,000 machines are available and deployed, then by February 13, 2007,   67.5 million would be registered.

That would be a miracle, to quote Prof. Maurice Iwu himself.

And What Is There To Do?

It appears that the wisest thing to do right now if most voters are not to be disenfranchised is for INEC to state that it has done its very best for now, and to institute right away a MANUAL registration alongside the electronic   one even where machines exist.  Registrants should be allowed to choose which one they want – after all, all machine-registered persons are currently being manually registered anyway.   Certainly it would also be wise to institute manual registration right away where no machines currently exist, and enable electronic registration ALONGSIDE the manual registration when those machines arrive, again allowing registrants to choose which one of the two they want..

Wise counsel should prevail in this first important step.  Nevertheless, it must fully noted that this is NOT the most important step in the election process:   rather, it is ensuring that the votes of those who ACTUALLY vote count.   For what is the point of registering accurately if your votes eventually do not count, either because they were not counted correctly or counted at all, and/or if they were not ANNOUNCED correctly?

Again, inquiring minds want to know.

And a Happy Thanksgiving (& Turkey) Day tomorrow for those living in the USA!

APPENDIX

TABLE 1:  Time Table of Activities and Schedule for the 2007 General Elections:

http://www.inecnigeria.org/newsview.php?newsid=195

After due consultation with the political Parties and other Stakeholders and with due regards to the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 and the Electoral Act 2006. The Independent National Electoral Commission has approved the following Time Table of Activities and Schedule for the 2007 General Elections: