Jega At Senate: Affirms Use Of PVC For Elections, Can't Guarantee Polls Will Hold As Scheduled
SAN FRANCISCO, February 18, (THEWILL) – The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega, Wednesday reaffirmed that only voters with permanent voting cards will be accredited to vote in the March 28 and April 11, 2015 general elections.
Jega spoke at the Senate on Wednesday where he briefed senators on the readiness of the electoral commission to conduct credible elections, saying the use of the electronic voting cards embedded with chips containing personal bio-data of voters was constitutional and ruled out manual accreditation of voters during the elections.
INEC's insistence on using the permanent voting cards has frustrated moves by some members of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who have been canvassing for the use of the temporary voting cards, which facilitates electoral fraud.
“They were introduced pursuant to the powers granted to the commission by the 1999 Constitution (as amended). INEC is empowered by Section 16(4) of the Electoral Act, 2010 to and I quote: 'wherever it considers it necessary, replace any voter card for the time being'.
“An election is said to be validly conducted if it meets certain basic requirements, including accreditation of voters.
“The use of the card reader for the purpose of accreditation of voters is one of the innovations introduced by the commission to improve the credibility of the electoral process.
“It is not offensive to the Electoral Act or to the Constitution. It adds value to the desires of Nigerians to have a credible election in line with international best practice,” Jega told senators.
Also, the INEC Chairman said the electoral commission could not guarantee that the elections will hold as scheduled saying only security agencies and services chiefs can guarantee security for the polls even though the commission remains ready to conduct the elections.
Jega said: “I kept saying consistently that INEC is not a security organization. We are an election management body. So, we rely a lot on security to be able to ensure that things are done well and that there is no disruption of the electoral process.
“We have been working very closely with the Inter-Agencies Consultative Committee on election security and that is why for us, if the service chiefs say that we can't guarantee security, give us more time, what is the alternative security arrangement?
“We are going to use close to 700, 000 ad hoc staff. We can't send people to the field in that kind of a situation. Our hope and prayer is that in the next six weeks there will be significant improvement in the security situation for us to be doing elections all over this country in a very secured environment.
“There are certain questions that we are not really competent to answer. Certain questions should be directed to the military, and they can answer it better.
“I must say that every Nigerian knows that we want elections to hold within the constitutional time-frame. We should be fair also to the military. Soldiers are also patriotic Nigerians. Let us give them the benefit of doubt.
“I don't see how anybody will contemplate any extension beyond these six weeks. There are no constitutional grounds upon which you can do that. It will only have to be unconstitutional. I don't see how anybody will contemplate any unconstitutional means. For us, we work by the constitution, by the law and as far as we are concerned, that is what is guiding us and we should all put the interest of the nation at heart.
“On February 8, after additional broad consultation with key stakeholders, the commission decided to accede to the strong advice of the National Security Adviser, NSA, and the Service Chiefs to reschedule the elections to March 28 and April 11.”
The INEC chairman clarified that the use of the card reader would not amount to electronic voting, explaining that though Section 52 of the Electoral Act prohibits the use of electronic voting, the card reader was not a voting machine.
According to him, the card reader is only an electronic machine introduced to improve the integrity of the voting process.
He stressed that INEC didn't see the need for an amendment of the Electoral Act to accommodate the use of card readers.
Jega said that for the purposes of ensuring that the electoral process was credible, the card reader would be used in the verification of voters.
“In the likely event that a card reader fails, we have enough spares to deploy before the end of the accreditation at 1 p.m.
“If we cannot replace before the end of accreditation, then the election in that particular point will be postponed to the following day when a new card reader will be provided.
“If you say, if a card reader fails we go back to manual voting, we are worried that everywhere we will revert to manual accreditation because there are many people who don't want card readers to be used.
“The likelihood of card reader failing is slim; we had solid legal advice and we do not believe it violates legal provisions.
“It is not electronic voting, it is verification. There is a difference between voting and the voting process.
“Anybody can go to court on anything but we believe we have not done anything wrong,” he stated.
Jega disclosed that the commission hoped to utilize the six-week election date extension period to carry out voter education and public enlightenment.
He also pointed out that so far, the commission had tested the card readers for durability and functionality and was satisfied with the results.
While enumerating the advantages of the card reader, he said that it would increase the credibility of the election process.
“Once the card reader is configured, it can only read PVCs issued by INEC at the polling unit that it has been configured for.
“It reads the embedded chip card not the barcode; it enables authentication of the identity of the voter by matching his or her finger print with that code on the chip of the card.
“It keeps a tally of all cards read and all cards verified or authenticated with all their details, including the time when this was done,'' he said.
“This information can be sent to a central server using an SMS; the stored information on the server will enable INEC to audit results from polling units.
“It will as well as do arrangement of statistical analysis of the demographics of voting, something INEC has never been able to do effectively.
“The ward collation officer can use this information to audit polling unit result sheets and to determine whether accreditation figures have been altered, a common feature of electoral fraud in our jurisdiction,” Jega added.
He disclosed that the PVCs were made to last for more than 10 years, and as such, could be used for the 2019 elections.
*** Report written with additional information by NAN.