Remind me again why we’re optimistic about this voters’ registration

– By Dr. Harisson  Chidiogo Diala –

For over six months Nigerians have been bombarded with repeated promises of the resolve of the Jonathan administration to deliver a free, fair and credible election in 2011. Not many have reflected on that promise, which merely exploited our psychological state of mind for a change, any change.  Experts on Nigerian Constitution and the electoral process all agree that the President has little, if any, role to play in the conduct of elections.  As Governor Donald Duke recently educated us, even the INEC Chairman has a minimal role to play in the field conduct of elections. Several commentators have indicated that what ails Nigeria’s elections is a systemic problem that is not amenable to quick-fix solutions or engagement in blame game and selecting a scapegoat.   Serious attempts to reform the system through amendments of the Electoral Act and the 1999 Constitution were derailed in the erroneous belief that all we needed was to spend huge amount of money on propaganda   and appoint a new INEC chairman.  The nation was sold to the false notion that our past electoral woes were caused by the leadership of the election management body, INEC and not the system that begged to be reformed.  

An elaborate reformed agenda was jettisoned and even the modest changes made in both the 1999 Constitution and the 2010 Electoral Act were quickly reversed to return the country to the old system of doing things.   Huge sums of money was spent to discredit INEC and to paint a saintly picture of a yet to be tested new Chairman.   The theory was that a credible Chairman equated to a credible electoral system. What logic. We are now faced with the realities of not facing the truth.

In August 2010, the On-line publication, Sahara Reporters published a story alerting Nigerians that the nation was about to become the laughing stock of the international community if Prof.  Jega’s advisers from the academia were allowed to have their way by foisting a supposedly “free” open source biometric voters’ registration software on the Nation.

The author of the story posited that “nowhere in the world has a large-scale biometric voters’ enrolment project been carried out using open source software downloaded from the internet, as INEC seems to be determined to do. If this was at all possible, then there would be no need for any country to spend millions of dollars on the purchase of similar software for voters’ registration as is indeed the case everywhere. Rather, all they would need to do is to download the software for free from the internet! But the reality is that it takes a considerable amount of manpower, time and resources to develop a world-class voters’ registration software that is suitable for use in a complex, large-scale biometric enrolment projects like INEC intends to carry out in Nigeria”.  So it was laughable when the INEC  Chairman announced to the nation that it had developed a new software for the voter registration exercise within weeks of taking over INEC’s leadership.

The murky side of the story is that the overriding reason for this experiment with Nigeria’s future is the interests of the INEC Chairman, Prof Jega and his advisers.  It was suggested that the reason for this unrealistic idea originated from the representative of Google in Nigeria – Mr. Nyimbi Odero – who was appointed by INEC as the Consultant for the voters’ registration exercise.  It was indicated that what was  very curious is the fact that Google had just recently funded a large part of a 3 billion naira investment in wireless network infrastructure for the University of Nigeria Nsukka, the same institution where Prof. Oke Ibeanu, the Chief Technical Adviser to the INEC Chairman, currently serves as a Professor of Political Science in the Faculty of Social Sciences. Perhaps even more curious are the strong indications that Google is considering a similar investment in Usman Dan Fodio University, Sokoto, where another social scientist  and Special Assistant to the INEC Chairman, currently serves. The only logical conclusion that can be drawn from the insistence of these Social Scientists, turned “ICT Experts”, is that Google is being rewarded with the role of Consultant and Software Provider for the Voters’ Registration exercise in exchange for agreeing to invest in the academic institutions of Prof. Jega’s close Advisers.  The writer noted that “Google is not in the business of voters’ registration software and that the Google Office Lead (Mr. Nyimbi Odero) has no experience whatsoever in the complex process of implementing biometric voters’ registration anywhere in Nigeria, or in his native country of Kenya for that matter”. 

And to make matters worse, the Chairman’s team, in their erroneous belief that ten thumb prints are better one as a ‘unique identifier’ embarked on a counter-productive biometric method used mainly in security identification system.  It is elementary knowledge in biometry that whereas multiple finger prints are good to establish the identity of an individual, the converse holds when you want to use it to prevent multiple entries as in a registration, except if each individual finger is treated as a unique identifier and exact match of all ten is not required in an AFIS (Automatic Fingerprint Identification System).

The point is that whereas we can muddle through the huge logistics problem and produce a voters’ register, the integrity of the register is already compromised. All because of the interests of a few social scientists who managed to fool a whole nation into believing that they are expert computer scientists. No one has bordered to check the background of any of them before accepting their much marketed ‘halo’ of integrity.

The voter’s register which was used for the 2007 election was by no means perfect and no one expected it to be so.  Since 2008, the country has been engaged in the compilation and updating a new voters’ register to correct the observed short-comings of the earlier register.  Nigerians who did not register previously and people who had turned 18 years of age since the last registration exercise were requested to avail themselves of the opportunity of continuous voter registration to register at the local government offices of INEC. When  Prof. Jega was appointed INEC Chairman in June 2010, he indicated his willingness to continue the updating of the old register. Indeed when he had his maiden meeting with the Resident Electoral Commissioners he instructed them to prepare for the display of the existing register which contained the results of the 2008 – 2010 continuous voter registration exercise.  During the 10 days display period of the voter register, the electorates were expected to review the register for ‘claims and  objections’   and such corrections were to be included in the updated register. But the INEC Chairman was re-directed by the Presidency to embark on a fresh exercise, in order to satisfy the ‘wishes of Nigerians for a credible register’, regardless of the cost and the practicality.  The American were also at hand to lend support to this madness, knowing  well that the exercise was not only unnecessary but not feasible.  The  expert advice from both IFES and UNDP was ignored. The only objective for spending a whooping N87bn was to discredit the Nigerian electoral system.

There were two viable options for the Nigerian Electoral Management Body, the first was to continue the continuous voters registration started by the previous INEC leadership and if for political reasons, the first option was not attractive, INEC should have constructed a new database with all the filters and checks it wants in the new system and migrate the entire datasets from the previous register to a new one. It is as simple as that. It is still not too late to embark on the second option.  A Register of Voters does not consists only of field-data. It encompasses much more than that. The errors observed in the existing Register are within acceptable margins given the size of the database.  We can increase the abuse on Iwu to divert attention, quietly use the data he generated as we did in Bauchi, Gombe,  Delta re-run elections and save the country a major embarrassment.  What is required now is astute management of technology and the political courage to reverse ourselves, not more propaganda.

Dr. Harisson Diala, Trevor Campbell Fellow lives in Shipley, West Yorkshire. England