INEC Gives Pass Mark on Test-run for Smart Cards

PVC collection rises marginally to 80.61% PDP writes commission on card readers, identifies observed problems

Chuks Okocha The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) yesterday rose in defence of last Saturday’s test run of the Smart Card Readers (SCRs), stating that it was satisfied with the outcome of the exercise.

The commission said the mock election held at the weekend had achieved its purpose and objectives.

In a statement issued by the Chief Press Secretary to the INEC Chairman, Kayode Idowu, the commission said: “INEC is satisfied that the use of SCRs in the general election will add tremendous transparency and credibility to the accreditation process on election day.”

The commission reiterated its decision to deploy SCRs for the 2015 general election, stating that the main objective was to verify Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs) presented by voters at polling units and ensure that they are genuine.

It also said the test-run achieved its objective of biometrically authenticating the person who presents a PVC at the polling unit and ensure that he or she is the legitimate holder of the card.

In this regard, there were a few issues in some states during the public demonstration. Overall, 59 per cent of voters who turned out for the demonstration had their fingerprints successfully authenticated. But the commission, in agreement with registered political parties, had provided in the approved guidelines for the conduct of the 2015 elections that where biometric authentication of a legitimate holder of a genuine PVC becomes challenging, there could be physical authentication of the person and completion of an Incident Form to allow the person to vote.

The commission said the SCRs provided a disaggregated data of accredited voters in male/female and elderly/youth categories – a disaggregation that is vital for research and planning purposes, but which INEC until now, had been unable to achieve, saying: “The demonstration on Saturday fully served this objective.”

It further said: “The SCR sends the data of all accredited voters to INEC’s central server, equipping the commission to be able to audit figures subsequently filed by polling officials at the PU and, thereby, be able to determine if fraudulent alterations were made, stating again, “The public demonstration also succeeded wholly in this regard.”

Accordingly, INEC said: “From the reports on Saturday’s exercise, this objective achieved 100 per cent. “The commission hereby reassures the public that it will do everything necessary to ensure that the processes of the elections are seamless, free, fair, credible and peaceful.”

However, INEC said it took note of places where the exercise failed and had thoroughly directed an investigation on what happened.

In view of this, the commission said: INEC nevertheless took a serious view of the high rate of the SCRs’ failure to authenticate voters’ fingerprints in some areas, particularly in Ebonyi State, and has decided to thoroughly investigate the cause; as well as repeat the public demonstration in that state.

“This demonstration will be conducted in the particular registration area involved in the last exercise, namely Izzi Unuhu (Abakaliki Local Government Area); as well as in Ibii/Oziza registration area (Afikpo North Local Government Area). The repeat of the demonstration will be on March 14.

INEC the decision was based on the outcome of the meeting it had yesterday where it considered field reports from the public demonstration of SCRs conducted in 12 states on March 7.

The exercise took place in the following states: Rivers and Delta (South-south), Kano and Kebbi (North-west), Anambra and Ebonyi (South-east), Ekiti and Lagos (South-west), Bauchi and Taraba (North-east) as well as Niger and Nasarawa (North-central).

Meanwhile, the commission yesterday revealed that 55,490,031 eligible voters or 80.61 per cent had collected their PVCs.

This is out of the 68,833,471 registered voters for the 2015 general election.

However, as the leaders of the political parties and Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) meet today to brain storm on the outcome of last Saturday’s test-run SCR, the ruling PDP has written to INEC on the observed faults and challenges with the card readers.

Also, PDP, referring to the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC), said the PVCs that were rejected during the test run of the card readers were those that were cloned by one of the registered political parties, on which the Department of the State Security raised the alarm recently.

These were disclosed to journalists by the Deputy National Chairman of PDP, Prince Uche Secondus, who gave an insight into the letter by the party to INEC.

According to Secondus, the letter to INEC on the SCRs identified three major issue with the card readers, which he said is, “Three finger sensitivity level: Medium, Low and High. High sensitivity setting makes accreditation very difficult, while low sensitivity setting makes accreditation very easy.”

“The High Sensitivity setting makes the accreditation to take place for over twenty minutes, while the low sensitivity setting makes accreditation to take place within three minutes.

“We urged INEC to test the card readers. We believe that has been done but the result of it has not been made known to the public. There are various opinions and reports from various locations across the country. From our own perspective, the card readers as tested on Saturday by INEC has three major elements from our observations and reports reaching us from the field. They described some of card readers as very high sensitive setting; low sensitive setting and medium sensitive setting.

“The implications of that are that the high sensitive setting makes it difficult for accreditation which takes up to 15 to 20 minutes while the low sensitive makes it easy for accreditation which takes about 3 mins to four mins as the case may be.

“So we concluded that the card readers have some major default and this can be corrected by INEC because it will be wrong that in some centres, we find there will be easy accreditation in some areas and very difficult accreditation in other locations within the same time frame allotted by INEC and the law. What we are asking for is uniformity.”

Accordingly, Secondus said, “This technical areas that need to be addressed by INEC need to be addressed as quickly as possible so that some areas will not find it so difficult to perform their civil rights while others will have it easy doing so.”

He said INEC should not be carried away rhetoric, noting “It is a matter of technical details and there are technical thing, they should look into the complaints.”

He explained further: “This is our observation but we have more details and we have written to INEC giving it more details of our complaints in writing. So that we don’t politicise the issue of voting with regards to the card reader as some political parties are already doing their propaganda. We want to urge INEC to do same, to look into the matter urgently.”