The ICT-driven voters’ registration

L’actualité au Nigeria, c’est la révision de la liste électorale qui a commencé le 15 janvier pour prendre fin le 29. Pour la première fois depuis l’indépendance du Nigeria en 1960, la biométrie est à l’honneur. En dépit de quelques ratés, l’exercice se poursuit...
Ci-dessous, une réflexion sur la révision de la liste électorale à la biométrie. En Anglais s’il vous plait....

Bonne lecture !

ONCE again, our dear nation is on the threshold of a momentous event, this year’s general elections. Preceding that election is the all-important issue of compiling a voters’ register, an activity that has always been crucial to whether or not we get a credible election .
This time around, to curb some of the ills that marred previous elections, it was agreed that technology be deployed to ensure fidelity of the voters’ register. This in turn led to massive appropriations that will empower the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) acquire the necessary hardware and software to achieve this.
To further ensure INEC has a free run, the academic calendar had to be tinkered with. As a result, resumption of primary and secondary school children nationwide had to be delayed an extra two weeks while INEC does its job. That is in addition to staff of other statutory organisations drafted for the exercise.
We are saddened by the fact that despite the financial appropriations and the added deprivations of keeping schoolchildren at home, the exercise took off with the usual malaise that attend national exercises of this nature.
From what is observed, INEC’s personnel were mostly unprepared for the exercise. In many registration centres, not up to 50 persons have been registered, even as the exercise enters its fifth day.
The reasons given, and which all can see include inability of the registration officials to properly operate the equipment with which they are to do their job. Of course, there is the power problem, which at one registration centre, simply wrecked the machines as they went up in smoke on being connected. Worse than this is the insistence of INEC on a software which it said it got free, but which can now be seen is generating problems, especially with the capturing of fingerprints. In many instances, the scanner is not working as expected, such that one prospective voter is still being attended for the better part of two hours.
Then, those captured cannot get their voters’ cards because of printer failure. If all these are not enough, the problem of logistics reared its ugly head. In many other cases, registration officials are yet to be seen at designated centres. Entire stretches of city areas, not to talk of villages and towns in remote areas are yet to be reached with officials and their equipment. And we have only two weeks to get registered.
Going on and recounting the woes will simply take more time.
It is the position of this newspaper that with the massive sum of money INEC asked for and got, its preparations for this exercise ought to be more reassuring than what we have seen. Since it’s a human situation, we do not expect one hundred per cent perfection, though we would all feel better if we do not seem overwhelmed by the hiccups.
We expect INEC to burn the candles at both ends, move immovables and give this country a credible voters’ register. We can do it.