In praise of the card reader

Observers have noted that Professor Attahiru M. Jega, Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had not smiled once since he sat down last Monday to begin the announcement of the results of the presidential election. And to the end he didn’t- there appeared to be nothing wrong with him. Perhaps he just waited to approach and accomplish and put finishing touches to what might be his official swansong-his final assignment, which he decided to do in grand style and with seriousness appropriate to a weighty undertaking requiring involved but disinterested engagement.

But, all this was soon to change as he was rudely challenged, but not even that could draw a smile or a shout.

He had just started announcing results available when a former minister of Niger Delta, and kinsman of the president, Godsday Orubebe, accused the chairman of partiality.

According to him, the All Progressives Congress (APC) was in possession of an election result he believed had been given to it by the INEC chairman. The theatrics he created brought the counting to a grinding halt.

Jega sat unruffled as Orubebe, a PDP corepresentative at the collation centre, heckled him.

“Let the world know that Jega is a tribalist and he is compromised!” Orubebe yelled.

And Jega calmly asked, “You have made accusations against me, can I respond now?”

But Orubebe kept shouting, “You cannot respond here; go to your office and respond!” He went on ranting as if his intention was to leave the nation in no doubt that he was in control of his senses.

At long last, he had his fill and kept quiet enough for Jega to respond. “Mr Orubebe, you are a former minister of the Federal Republic .You are a statesman in your own right. You should be careful about what you say or what allegations or accusations you make. Certainly you should be careful about your public conduct,” Jega said.

Jega’s dignified composure and calmness, reminiscent of that sangfroid latent even in the enraged temper of a third-generation Kanuri intellectual warrior, in the face of Orubebe’s wildeyed, foaming-at-the-mouth, totally unjustified provocation, might as well have drawn the line between the conduct of a democratic mind and that of a soon-to-be-disinherited huntergatherer mindset.

The former minister’s crazy and uncultured boorishness has now been immortalised in Nigeria’s official popular culture by Jega’s characterisation of it, especially by that final, degrading put down of an admonishment delivered by the professor. This has since gone viral.

The problem started for the ruling party when it became obvious card readers would be used for the election. According to INEC factsheet on permanent voter cards and card readers, on Election Day, the permanent voter’s card will be swiped with a smartcard reader at the polling unit to ensure 100 per cent authentication and verification of the voter before voting is allowed. It will be the first time that this electronic voter authentication system technology is being used in Nigeria.

And on the question of the use or non-use of the card readers, the popular suspicion was that the PDP favoured non-use because only that would allow it return electoral figures from the South-East and the South-South that would beat the near-total that Buhari’s cult following would garner in his political stronghold.

The ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) appeared opposed to the use of the card reader. It alleged that its use would create delays in the conduct of the election, which would appear to be a contradiction to the party’s official stand on wanting to postpone. In the run up to the election, a Federal high court in Abuja refused to grant an application by a senatorial candidate of the PDP to stop the use of card readers for the conduct of the elections. At that time, the opposition APC alleged that PDP’s objection to the use of card readers is a ploy to either prevent the polls entirely or create ground to rig it.

When they claimed that card readers in the zone had malfunctioned and they needed to do voter-verification manually, Jega and the nation were put in a quandary. If you allowed it there would almost certainly be rigging-of the scale of 99.9% turn out from the South-South and SouthEast seen in 2011. If you stopped election in the two zones until the problem is rectified, in the end, the result, as the ruling party then hoped would be inconclusive.

And, practically-and very convenientlycard reader failed to work in parts of the two zones. And anything could happen and when election resumed, the co-efficient of the rigging calculus would have been calculated with greater precision.

Like the country’s population census, the nation’s voters’ register-and in a way it is itself one type of demographics, the population of the voting age-is subject to the doctrine of the MASImutually assured self-inflation, which is the first stage in rigging. Victory in elections depends on who has the wherewithal to rig. With these ghost voters, politicians, and not we, the people, decide who is elected and who is not. They can twist the ballot at will; they can stuff the ballot box; and then, if all fails, they can steal it.

In the end, Jega allowed manual verification which clearly a mistake but proved quite fortuitous because without this mistake, greater rancour than the one cause by Orubebe would have greeted the declaration of the results and General Buhari’s victory would have been hotly contested.

Now, the card reader has put everyone to shame. It has shown that the register has been inflated everywhere. The passion generated by the election ought to have produced a turn out of order of 80%+, but nowhere using the card has reached anywhere near it.

No one can vote unless he is supposed to; no one is supposed to until he is accredited and no one can be accredited until the card reader verifies him. The unpopular may not rig the popular may not lose. Whatever happens, the result produced by the card reader will always be the least unacceptable on the circumstance. This election will not have been possible, peaceful, or acceptable without the card reader.

The card reader is the veritable saviour of Nigeria’s democracy. It is the only thing that has ensured and will ensure Nigerians elect the leaders they want. Otherwise we will have continued to be ruled by leaders elected by thumb-printers inking ballot papers in the garages of politicians, security personnel and compromised officials of the election agency.

All this is past now and we have many winners and the first is the card reader. The nation is the second winner: it was able with this performance to graduate to a democracy that has matured before it even comes of age.

The third winner is President Goodluck Jonathan whose conduct at the end of the electioneering process is only surpassed by his refusal to assent to the same-sex marriage bill. “If a person doesn’t benefit the world with his life, he will do so with his death” is an adage that may not be entirely appropriate to our circumstance; but even for his bitterest of enemies, the president’s performance as he conceded defeat can hardly be bettered for its statesmanship. And even if it comes to light that the pressure of western nations procured it, its stateliness would remain undiminished. But most importantly, for him, it has proved supremely therapeutic and redemptive. Who is there who still has any feelings of animosity or ill feeling against the president?

Jega is the fourth winner for displaying such supreme and superior maturity in the face of provocation-calmness in the face of excited superciliousness, logic in response to base illogic, facts in response to unfounded allegations-and, especially, for that astonishing ability not to lose cool

Now, it has all come to pass; and as we look back, it is now clear the main political agenda of post-Obasonjo Nigeria has failed. It was to use religion to divide the north, set its people against themselves and misuse religion to perpetuate it. But, by the pattern of voting, General Buhari’s appeal has been able to cut across the religious divide; and his victory has been made possible as much by the split vote of the South West as by the split but more solid votes of the North-central.

But for some, memory holds the door. Mujahid Asari-Dokubo said that with the defeat of President Goodluck Jonathan, Niger Delta militants might be forced to return to the creeks. He had earlier threatened war if President Jonathan lost the election; and now he accuses the South-West and the North of having the temerity to gang up against the South-South and South-East. He said the majority ethnic groups were emasculating minorities, and feared that the government of the President-elect, Muhammadu Buhari, would be vicious.

“The days coming will be critical. We shall study all the conditions and consult widely before determining the way forward for our collective existence and survival as a people,” he said. “The days coming shall either drive the quest of integration or further separate us.”

After rampaging all over the nation and its resources, the so-called Niger-Delta militants might have only shown Nigeria to what depth its the worst could sink, but in the end they have only succeeded in isolating the East. Because little that is good ever comes out of hatred and still less does so out of blood. And if there is any loser in this saga-and there is-it is the setters of the agenda-politicians of the defunct East Central States led or symbolised by the militants and some of the minorities of the Niger Delta. They have led themselves down the garden path.

Earlier on, they had deliberately recoiled into the embrace of enclave politics and communal celebration and even consecration of unmistakeable incompetence, perhaps foreclosing the prospects of a successful minority-or even Eastern-presidential candidate in the foreseeable future of the nation’s politics.