Voters Registration: The Gains And Pains

The three week voters registration exercise which ended penultimate on Saturday 5 February 2011 with originally tales of woes, frustration and success. The voters registration exercise was criminally scheduled to end two-week but extended by seven, days to enable the Independent National Electoral Commission solve all the problems associated with the exercise.

Prince Chika Mini, a legal practitioner based in Port Harcourt, said it was not surprise that the 2006 voter registration exercise was not different from the 2011 electronic voter registration. Hence, the INEC officials were unable to effectively operate the direct data capturing (DDC) machines during the early days into the two-week exercise. In his words: “the voter registration exercise, a key element in the electoral process, turned out to be a flop despite the so much talked about electoral reforms and the billions of naira smith into the exercise,” he said further.

“Nigerians hope, optimism were dashed and despair reigns in the minds of eligible voters following the initial hiccups experienced throughout the exercise across the nation.

Under the amended Electoral Law 2010, Part III Section 9(5) INEC has the power to commence the registration of voters, updating and revision of register of voters not later than 60 days before any election. Also under Section 10(3) stated “The Commission shall within sixty days after each year make available to every political party, the names and address of each person registered during that year.” How realistic will INEC implement this extant Law is yet to be seen.

Despite the gains political observers argued that the exercise witnessed anger, frustration and disappointment against the operations of the direct data capturing (DDC) Machines. In some centres in Rivers State and other States, the voters registration exercise took off late. The process was marred by the difficulty in thumb printing on the DDC machines.

Similar incident occurred in some areas, where scanners failed to function effectively thereby causing slow process in the exercise. Also, lack of constant electricity supply hampered the effective operations of the machines and poor power supply were among some of the lapses as witnessed by eligible voters.

However, some of the eligible voters investigation revealed complained about registration officials. For example, in Port Harcourt ward 20 at Azuabie registration centre, an eligible voter, Mr. Wariboko Tari, said the registration officials lack the necessary understanding of the application and knowledge on how to operate the computer.

He further said some of the registration officials called INEC ad-hoc staff cannot even connect the system because they are inexperience.

Investigation further revealed that the training programme conducted for the Ad-hoc staff prior to the commencement of the registration exercise was not fruitful as some of the ad-hoc staff (NYSC) members can not operate the machine. Yet they were paid N800 daily for transportation and N30,000 allowance for the duration of the voters registration exercise.

Most eligible voters interviewed blamed the pain associated with the exercise on the inexperience nature of the ad-hoc staff (NYSC) members deployed to operate (DDC) machines during the initial commencement of the exercise.

Also, Mr. Thompson Okujagu a resident of Okrika Island said, the process that hindered the effective voters registration exercise was the poor publicity management by INEC and the various organs of government. For instance, he observed that a lot of eligible voters were left in the dark about where the registration centres are located specially, the surrounding fishing settlements.

Mrs. Blessing Chukwu of Anoze Street, Mille 2 Diobu collaborated this fact and said, it took her and her family three days to discover where the registration centre was in Diobu for her to register.

She added nobody informed them of the whereabout of the registration centres till their neighbours discovered it and informed them. She said “we only register when the state government declared a work free day”.

Towards a hitch free voters registration, INEC had in November 2010 awarded the contract for the supply of 132,000 Direct Data Capturing Machine to three companies out of the four companies that bidded.

The successful companies were Haier Electrical Appliances Corporation Limited awarded 30,000 units at 1699,60 dollar, per unit. Zinox Technologies Limited awarded 80,000 units at 1771,73 dollar, per unit Avante International Technology Incorporation limited awarded 22,000 Units at 1699,60 dollar, per unit.

An official of the INEC Port Harcourt Ms. Chizoreze Nwagbara said the DDC machines were purchased from China where they were assembled.

China was considered because of it low cost of production. Nigerians complaint bordered on alleged low quality of the machines from China and logistic problems. The low quality of the machines was alleged to be responsible for the malfunctioning of the machines.

According to Chief Engineer of an I.T firm in Port Harcourt, Engr. Goddy Onwuigbo told The Tide that INEC failed to open and check or test the effectiveness of the DDC machines before distributing it out to their state offices. He said the DDC machines were substandard and of poor quality in the I.T. international market.

He further said Nigerians witnessed the shoddy voters’ registration exercise  due to the faulty equipment, substandard DDC Machines, incompetent vendors and adoption of software produced by a less qualified consultant. Some of the problems also were attributable to a situation where some states were equally supplied insufficient DDC  machines for the voters registration exercise.

The problem, according to most eligible voters, seem insurmountable that Nigerians had to call for seven-day extension of the exercise to address the problems.

However, when the INEC’s Chairman, Prof. Jega appeared before the Senate to explain some of the hitches that trailed the registration exercise, he said the initial crisis which made it difficult for most eligible voters to register was caused by the DDC machines which were mistakenly formatted forensic exercise that were of higher grade than mere capturing of the information necessary for elections.

He demanded for extra budgetary provision of 6.6 billion naira approval to cope with the extension of the exercise by one week from 29th January -5 February.

By the extension, eligible voters who were disappointed by the malfunctioning of (DDC) machines took advantage of the seven-day extension to register. Yet there are more pressures and calls on INEC for further extension of the registration exercise to enable eligible voters exercise their franchise.

Investigations revealed that in some riverine communities of Rivers State, much had not be done to achieve the much expected gains. For instance, some eligible voters clustered  around the riverine communities of Andoni, Okirika, Kalabari, Bonny may have been disenfranchised due to logistic problem.

The totality of the people’s verdict is that INEC should put its house in order before the main elections, as Nigerians are not prepared for flimsy excuse from Prof. Jega and his team, especially in their inability to enhance the success of the democratic governance.

The teeming problems identified specially the central server and capacity to tackle multiple registrations must be addressed by INEC now before the general elections.

Philip-Wuwu Okparaji