In a newspaper of Sunday, December 3 (see below), House Speaker Bello Masari is quoted in an exasperated tone as saying the following:
QUOTE
``[INEC CHAIRMAN PROFESSOR] Iwu is opening a new issue which he never talked about before'', [HOUSE SPEAKER] Masari said, before adjourning the House sitting till December 5.
UNQUOTE
And that is the problem......
When a public officer puts his ego on the line so much that he finds it difficult to listen to the public about failure that is staring his agency in the face if some new drastic action is not taken, he then looks for face-saving maneuvers that will make it look as if he knew what he was doing all along.
No one is fooled.
OF INEC'S 2002 REGISTRATION
The last set of General Elections were held in Nigeria in 1999 and 2003. The current president and a significant number of the legislators nationwide were supposedly, allegedly elected based on certain voters on the relevant voters' registers. The last comprehensive voters registration exercise was conducted between September 12 and 22, 2002. Following complaints from the public, a make-up exercise was carried out for a week in December 2002. Altogether 67,892,762 applications were reported to have been received, and 60,823,022 voters were actually egistered. [See Tables 1 and 2 below, for state-by-state breakdowns of some critical INEC and DCNR data.]
With a number as precise-looking as "60,823,022" for voter population for 2003, should we not have 100% confidence?
Moving on...
At a death rate of 16.94 deaths/1,000 population per annum (2006 est.; CIA website) for Nigeria, of this population, a total of no more than 3 million should have died, realistically no more than maybe 2 million, since the overall death rate would include very young children and old people who might NOT be expected to have registered. At a population growth rate of 2.38% per annum for Nigeria (again a CIA figure), maybe about 4.3 million additional people might be on the voter roll, meaning that we should really not be expecting more than 65 million total voters in 2006/2007.
But when INEC was previously asked to begin its new registration on the basis of those old registers, Prof. Iwu said (in effect) that a dog had eaten all of them!
Now suddenly, the dog has vomited them - at least the 2002 electronic register - and they can now be used to begin a "re-validation".
It appears that this new epiphany is because after incessant criticisms, Iwu has now fully realised that the present electronic registration - which to date by INEC's admission has resulted in the registration of 4 million voters out of an estimated 65 people - ain't going to register maybe more than one tenth of the eligble voters by December 14, just less than two weeks away now. I know how slow it can be - it took me one hour to be registered in Ode-Ekiti on November 17, 2006. [see http://www.dawodu.com/aluko151
.htm ]
Better late than never....
Nevertheless, Iwu's insistence that the re-validation MUST include a new photo component will mean that only a little saving in time will STILL be obtained by this re-validation step. One wonders whether that would be useful.
EXPANDING THE OPTIONS
Consequently, my suggestions are as follows:
1. let the current electronic registration (with picture taking) continue as is, slow as it is, and possibly continue AFTER the 2007 elections. After all, we have paid for the machines, and they should be used.
2. however let the new re-validation come from two sources:
(i) the National picture ID card program that had gone on before now.
A comprehensive ID program was conducted in 2003, about six months after the voters' compilation exercise. The exercise lasted for four weeks from February 18 to March 16, 2003. It was initially billed for two weeks but following complaints from members of the public, it was extended to four weeks. The DNCR (Department of National Civic Registration of the Ministry of Internal Affairs) was expected to register more persons than INEC because more adolescents would have turned 18 years, and its exercise lasted for a longer period. However, it reported that it carded 52,052,780 - another accurate-looking figure - but 8,819,248 less than INEC's figure. Again, the state-by-state breakdown is shown in Table 1 below.
However, this is the latest February 2006 information on this ID program:
QUOTE
http://www.europeanbiometrics
.info/news/newsdetail.php?Id
_news=103
60 million Nigerians are to be issued with a biometric national ID card. According to local newspaper reports the ID cards will be embedded with fingerprints and will be distributed in 2007. So far 15 million Nigerians have been issued with ID cards.
Alhaji Shuaibu Sabon-Birni, the director of Civic Registration in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, said that the estimated number of Nigerians between the ages 18 and above is 60 million. He also hopes that by first quarter of 2007, every eligible Nigerian will have been registered and issued the identity card.
Sabon-Birni disclosed that his Department is collaborating with the Nigeria Immigration Service to ensure that non-Nigerians are not issued with the national identity card. He was quoted as saying: "Honestly as an African, it is inevitable you will have these problems, first and foremost how do you honestly differentiate between the person from Niger and the person from the northern part of Sokoto, we speak the same language, we look alike, we are Africans."
Source: Security Document World, 7 February 2006.
UNQUOTE
If this report is true, Alhaji Shuaibu, please allow INEC to simply attach a VIN number and possibly a bar code at the back of those 15 million already issued, will you? Thank you - even though we would like to ask why since 2003, only 15 million out of 52 million ID cards have only been issued?
And why did INEC have to duplicate DCNR's efforts?
(ii) those without National ID cards AND those without current electronic-registered INEC cards should simply report to INEC centers with their 2002 INEC cards, following which INEC should simply attach new 2006/2007 VIN numbers and a bar code AND then re-laminate them WITHOUT requiring pictures to be taken.
Consequently, even though there would be three types of identification for voting in 2007, what would be common to all of them would be newly-supplied VIN numbers. It is these VIN numbers that should act as the common ELECTRONIC REGISTRATION feature which can be used to ensure a one-man-one-vote feature that INEC is harping upon.
THE BOTTOM LINE
As I have emphasized in previous write-ups, while this voter registration exercise is a prima-facie desirable requirement for one-person-one-vote mandate for credible elections, the more important challenge in Nigeria's voting history is ensuring one-vote-one-count, followed by one-count-same-announcement! Thus, to act as if the voter registration is the panacea for all of our election problems is disingenuous, and our challenge is to ensure that the votes of those who show up at the polls not only count, but what is announced is actually what was counted.
2007 remains pregnant with both negative and positive possibilities. It may make or mar Nigeria - again.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. http://www.dawodu.com/aluko40
.htm
"State, Zonal and Regional Analyses of INEC Data for Voters' Applications, Registration and Disqualifications"
Mobolaji E. Aluko, April 7, 2003
2. http://www.dawodu.com/aluko48
.htm
"Voter Registration and ID Registration"
Mobolaji E. Aluko, May 15, 2003
3. http://www.dawodu.com/aluko151
.htm
"Why INEC Should Declare Victory And Go Manual Now"
Mobolaji E. Aluko, November 22, 2006
TABLE 1: Results of 2002/2003 Exercises by INEC and DCNR
|
State |
Registered Voters 2003 |
ID Cards 2003 |
Difference
[Reg Voters minus ID cards] |
|
|
Number of
Polling Stations |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
South-West |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ekiti |
981,753 |
470,341 |
511,412 |
2195 |
|
Lagos |
4,558,216 |
4,553,242 |
4,974 |
8465 |
|
Ogun |
1,576,875 |
1,575,825 |
1,050 |
3210 |
|
Ondo |
1,504,181 |
1,116,704 |
387,477 |
3009 |
|
Osun |
1,367,627 |
1,102,724 |
264,903 |
3010 |
|
Oyo |
2,209,953 |
2,124,588 |
85,365 |
4783 |
|
TOTAL SW |
12,198,605 |
10,943,424 |
1,255,181 |
24672 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
South-East |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Abia |
1,285,428 |
1,208,755 |
76,673 |
2676 |
|
Anambra |
1,859,795 |
1,516,908 |
342,887 |
4623 |
|
Ebonyi |
1,002,771 |
821,811 |
180,960 |
1784 |
|
Enugu |
1,479,542 |
1,233,338 |
246,204 |
2959 |
|
Imo |
1,630,494 |
1,296,153 |
334,341 |
3523 |
|
TOTAL SE |
7,258,030 |
6,076,965 |
1,181,065 |
15565 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
South_South |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Akwa Ibom |
1,624,495 |
1,257,349 |
367,146 |
2982 |
|
Bayelsa |
765,472 |
270,141 |
495,331 |
1805 |
|
Cross River |
1,289,192 |
1,010,282 |
278,910 |
2283 |
|
Delta |
1,607,337 |
1,437,184 |
170,153 |
3625 |
|
Edo |
1,432,891 |
1,327,839 |
Authors 
Posted by Robot| 03.12.2006 12:15