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 3rd 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
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