While confirming that Permanent Voter Cards were still being collected, he pointed out that it would in no way hinder the conduct of the polls. To those who are apprehensive that the percentage of collection of cards by voters has been very low, Jega said “what is the acceptable level of collection of cards for an election to take place? We did election in Ekiti, we did election in Osun State, in none of those places did the collection of voters’ cards get to 70 percent. But as I speak to you now, we are approaching 76 percent of collection nationwide”.
Speaking further, he said “we have said consistently, it is never perfect. Although anytime I say it is not perfect, there is always the headline ‘Jega says it’s not perfect’. But the fact of the matter is that it is never perfect. But we will do our best and our best is showing results. And if people can be patient, we will keep on improving the process”
After demonstrating how the card reader works on the floor of the Senate with Senators testing their PVCs, Prof. Jega pointed out that the issue of trying to scuttle the process of accreditation by not allowing its use at polling centres has already been envisaged. ‘We know that there are daredevils out there, some people will try in one polling unit or so to destroy it or make sure it is not used. But we do not envisage that our staff will succumb, and the security agencies will succumb and all the party agents and all the observers at the polling unit will succumb and allow that to happen. So if it happens at all, because you can’t rule it out, it will be very isolated and if it is isolated, we will deal with it as electoral offence”, he said.
Still on the collection and distribution of cards, the INEC Chairman said “we are trying our best to decentralize and we have seen remarkable improvement. As regards to ad hoc staff making it very difficult for people to collect, we received a lot of complaints and we did our best wherever we received complaints to investigate and if we are able to find people culpable, we actually disciplined them and I think in the last few weeks, it has improved remarkably. But part of the problem is that many people have left it until very late before they came out so there is always congestion.”
Professor Jega also took time to explain that “if a card reader fails during accreditation, then we will try and replace it within that time frame. Accreditation is between 8 am and 1 pm. So, if for example, a card reader fails at 10 am, before 1 pm, we will do everything possible to replace it. If we are able to replace it by 11, then the time lost will be added for the accreditation, so instead of finishing at 1 pm, in that polling unit, it will now be 2 pm. But if we cannot replace by 1 pm but we don’t see why we can’t, because we have decentralized to the ward level, there will be technical people who can configure them if it becomes necessary to replace. So we believe within that period we should be able to replace.’
He however disclosed that where it is impossible to replace, “it is better to say come back the following day and do it with a new card reader than to say revert to manual because once people know we can revert to manual, they will make sure all the card readers fail because we know people don’t want the card readers to be used. Certainly the card reader will give us a lot of opportunity to do a lot of statistical analysis and we are very excited about that. We will be able to differentiate the percentage of urban voters from rural voters and other categories.”
On the prevention of negative human intervention, Jega said “we hope we will be able to work with security agencies because we have said consistently that INEC is not a security organization, we are an election monitoring body. So we rely a lot on security to be able to ensure that things are done well and there is no disruption of the electoral process. That is why for us, if service chiefs say they can’t guarantee security, give us time, what is the alternative security arrangement? We met with the stakeholders we asked what is the alternative security arrangement, we can’t find the answer”.
Jega did not spare the politicians as he said “the human factor is there, it is a matter of attitude and I regret to say a lot of it is induced by politicians who want to win by hook or by crook because a lot of people who are interfering in the process, stealing ballot boxes, destroying ballot papers are actually people who are doing it for others who don’t even know the value of that. We all have a role to play to minimize this negative impact of human factor”.
Follow us on Twitter @DAnchoronline
Comments
Post a Comment