April polls: INEC rules out electronic register …it’s illegal, says commission

The Independent National Electoral Commission will not use the electronic voter register for the conduct of the April 2011 elections.

Investigations by SATURDAY PUNCH in Abuja showed that INEC had already taken the decision to conduct the elections with the manual voter register that was produced from the last voter registration in January and February.

The investigations by SATURDAY PUNCH showed that INEC initially contemplated using the electronic register, but opted for the manual register when it discovered that it would violate the 2010 Electoral Act if it adopted the e-register.

Similarly, Mr. Kayode Idowu, the Chief Press Secretary to the INEC Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, confirmed in an exclusive interview with SATURDAY PUNCH on Friday that the commission had opted to use the manual register for the next general elections starting on April 2.

Idowu argued that the commission could not act contrary to the express stipulations of the Electoral Act, which made e-voting an offence.

He argued that there was no difference between the electronic and manual registers as the latter was a direct replica of the e-version, which was produced in the voter registration with the Direct Data Capturing machines.

Idowu insisted that the purpose of the DDC machines was to capture the data of the prospective voters and not for voting during the election.

He maintained that the use of the DDC machines to capture the 10 fingers of prospective voters and other data during the registration of voters was meant to prevent fraudulent practices, such as double and multiple registration.

He however allayed the fears being expressed by stakeholders that the manual register would make it possible for unscrupulous characters to carry out their untoward acts of rigging and manipulation.

According to him, INEC has made adequate preparations to prevent any incident of double or multiple voting during the elections through the use of the Automatic Fingerprint Identification System software.

“I hope that the people are aware that the Electoral Act expressly outlaws e-voting and if the law outlaws e-voting, there is no way the commission can adopt that pattern of voting,” Idowu told SATURDAY PUNCH.

“Now the use of the manual register that they talked about is actually unnecessary because the manual register is a replica of the electronic register that the commission has used DDC machines to prepare. And the purpose of the DDC machines is only to gather data. It is not to vote.

“The manual register would be a replica of the e-register. First of all, the purpose of using the DDC machines in the first place and capturing 10 fingerprints is to make sure that people cannot double-register.

“If you say you register manually without the DDC machines to capture fingerprints, there could be fraud. But with the use of DDC machines, we now have the capacity and I can assure you, we have demonstrated that capacity.

“I wish that I have a copy of some of those that have been fished out, you will see the way the software has brought out multiple registrations. And so the use of the DDC machines is to make sure that people cannot register twice.

“And what we now have is that the register produced by the DDC machines is what will constitute the manual register, in which case you know a valid manual register.”

A major opposition party, the Action Congress of Nigeria, had raised the alarm on Monday that the plan to use the manual register for the election would be counterproductive.

The Publicity Secretary of the ACN, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, warned that using the manual register would make it possible for those who engaged in multiple registration and had purchased voter cards to rig the elections.

He expressed the fear that it would be impossible to ensure an effective screening of voters on Election Day without the use of the DDC machines that were used in the registration and had the data of the voters in the polling units.

“The voter registration was designed to ensure that only qualified voters would register and vote. The fingerprints captured during registration are stored in the system of each DDC machine, since there is no central data base as we have said in earlier statements.

“On Election Day, the fingerprints of each voter are to be taken again and compared with what has been stored in the computer. If the record is found, the person is considered authentic and should be allowed to vote. Once they have voted, the record will be updated to reflect that, and the person should not be allowed to vote again in the same election.

“It is therefore absolutely important that the computer used during registration, which now contains the records of all voters registered at a particular polling station, be brought back to the same polling unit on voting day to be used in the verification as indicated above.

“If the computer is not brought back and used to verify and authenticate each voter, only the manual register would be used, even though the people will be made to believe the system is foolproof since they will still be fingerprinted anyway.”

However, Idowu assured Nigerians that with the arrangements put in place by INEC to prevent fraud in the elections, it was impossible for anybody to get away with double or multiple registrations.

He said that the AFIS software had been tested and found to be very effective in detecting and deleting the names of those who indulged in double registration during the last exercise.

He added that the commission had taken other measures to ensure that the electoral process was not tainted such as the introduction of simultaneous accreditation and voting.

“On Election Day as an additional safety valve that the commission is putting in place, there will be simultaneous accreditation and simultaneous voting,” Idowu said. “The purpose of that also is that because accreditation will take place at the same time all over the country, there is no way you can accredit here, and accredit in another place.

“You can’t vote where you did not accredit. And if you must stay here to accredit, it means that even if you have 80 cards, you can only use one of the cards if you are lucky not to have been arrested before that day.”

He said that the commission had detected incidents of multiple registration with the AFIS software among who are a policeman who registered five times and another person who registered eight times.

He said that the commission would arrest and prosecute those involved in the conduct and celebrate their trial in order to use it as a deterrent to others.

-Punch

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Posted by admin on Feb 26 2011. Filed under EFCC Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry