PVC and CARD READER: WHAT INEC AND JEGA SHOULD HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY .. By WALE ADETARAMI @WaleAdetarami

                                                                   Prof Attahiru Jega

As a firm believer in transparent, free and fair election, I always throw my weight behind processes, developments, actions and technologies that could make it achievable. In Sub Sahara Africa, we always have this problem of election rigging; reluctance of incumbent to vacate office when defeated in an election; violence before, during and after election; voters’ intimidation; voters’ inducement and so on, we continue to make mockery of this great continent before the whole world, this is one of the reasons why many countries in Africa will never move out of the status of underdeveloped, the economy will never be the sole indicator to be used for assessment. Sadly people who perpetrate these acts are not fighting for the people but for themselves. Do we need people from the developed countries to come and oversee or conduct our elections for us? The answer is No, Nigeria is a sovereign state, we are independent, and we have attained this status for more than five decades, fifty-five years to be precise. It is about time we start getting things right, Nigeria should not be a place where we cannot conduct credible elections anymore, or a place where corruption, bad governance, nepotism, impunity, abuse of power reign supreme, not to talk of economic evils.

Now to the business of the day, the 2015 elections are fast approaching, we are aware of the plan by the independent national electoral commission (INEC) to  use permanent voters cards and card readers for the general elections, the advantage of the two is that they guarantee the authenticity of voters and reduce rigging to the minimum, while an average progressive Nigerian applauds this development, it is not going down well with perceived election riggers in Nigeria and they are using all their might to stop the use, whether they will succeed or not I don’t know. The ground these elements are using has to do with the number of people who have collected the PVC and the reliability of the card readers, since it is just being introduced into our electoral system. As at 3^rd of March, 2015, INEC announced that they have achieved 80% level of distribution of the PVCs. What INEC and Professor Jega should have done differently is to use the data submitted by voters at point of registration for the distribution of the PVCs.

INEC have in their records home addresses and telephone numbers of voters, what have they done with them, If my PVC is in your possession and you have my phone number, what stops you from sending short message service (SMS) to me to tell me the exact location where my card is and the contact of the person holding it? If the SMS did not work, why not call me and tell me precisely where to go to, to pick my card? The third alternative is to use the house numbers to trace the owners of the cards, I am sure with this suggestion we would have achieved more than 80% by now. Though it is not possible to achieve 100% level of distribution, the reasons are not far-fetched, frictional factors that  cause people to move from one place to another, death of some of the voters, multiple registrations, apathy to election are factors strong enough to whittle the rate of collections. To me, I will say about 95% percent collection rate can be regarded as 100%.

Wale Adetarami lives in Lagos, Nigeria

Follow him on twitter@WaleAdetarami

Average penis size – Los Angeles Times

Researchers have irrevocably answered one of the most compelling questions in the field of medicine: What is a normal size for a penis?
The answer, according to anatomically precise measurements of up to 15,521 men from around the world, is 3.6 inches (9.16 centimeters) in the resting state and 5.2 inches (13.12 centimeters) when erect.
These average lengths are just two of the findings reported in BJU International, the official journal of the British Assn. of Urological Surgeons and a handful of other medical societies. But previous to we go on to more of their results, let’s pause for another question:
Why should anyone spend any amount of time trying to map this out?
The research team – from King’s College London, King’s College NHS Foundation Trust and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust – offered several reasons. A scientifically validated answer may help doctors reassure men with conditions like “small penis anxiety” or body dysmorphic disorder who endure considerable distress due to the size of their organ. It could also help manufacturers design best condoms with lower failure rates.
So the group conducted an exhaustive search for published studies with reliable assessments of penile length and girth. To qualify, studies had to include 50 or more male volunteers who were at least 17 years ancient. Would-be participants were disqualified if they suffered from erectile dysfunction or had any physical abnormalities, counting implants. Only studies with careful measurements taken by health professionals were included in the analysis.

The researchers wound up with 20 studies that evaluated thousands of men. They assumed that if they plotted all the measurements, the delivery of penis sizes would fall along a bell curve. Then they used that to come up with charts that showed length and girth by percentile.
It takes 3.6 inches from the root of the penis to the tip of the glans to hit the 50^th percentile for flaccid length. That means 68% of men measure between 3 and 4.2 inches, and 95% are in the 2.4- to 4.8-inch range.
Furthermore, with an average length of 5.2 inches for an erect penis, 68% of men measure between 4.5 and 5.8 inches and 95% are in the 3.9- and 6.5-inch range.

The average circumference, or girth, of a resting penis is 3.7 inches (9.31 cm); for an erect penis, it’s 4.6 inches (11.66 cm).
Their investigation presented an chance for the researchers to test the validity of the folklore surrounding penis size. They found no convincing support in the data for the thought that penis size is correlated with the length of one’s index finger or the ratio of the length of the second and fourth fingers. Nor was there any excellent evidence that foot size was a predictor of penis size. Age, body mass index and testicular volume were also unrelated.

But, the data did show that height offered some predictive value for estimating penis length. The correlation was weak but statistically significant, according to the study.
The overwhelming majority of men included in the analysis were Caucasian or Middle Eastern, and only a few hundred were of African or Asian descent. That made it impossible “to draw any conclusions about any differences in penile size across different races,” the researchers wrote.
Despite the large number of men included in the study, the researchers said their results might be biased if well-endowed men were more inclined to be measured. They also acknowledged that the findings – though intended to provide reassurance to most people – could timely up to half of all men to feel “defective” or “abnormal” upon learning that their measurements are below average.
If so, a 2006 study from the journal Psychology of Men & Masculinity might make some of them feel best. After surveying more than 52,000 people, researchers from UCLA and CSULA found that while 45% of men wished they had a larger penis, 85% of women thought their partner’s organs were just fine.
If scientists research it, we will tell you about it! Follow me on Chirrup @LATkarenkaplan and “like” Los Angeles Times Science & Health on Facebook.
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles Times