Bob Okonyia

2015 general elections. However, all the recommendations made to improve our electoral management by RERC were never applied by INEC in the 2015 general elections, because all the errors observed the 2011 elections re-occurred in 2015!

First, partisanship, tribalism and ethnicity have somewhat become an acceptable way of life among Nigerians since the first republic. These negative traits were accentuated by the iniquitous federal character policy. Performance and capability were no more criteria for selection of candidates for any suitable position. The eligibility for any position now depended on your political party affiliations, tribe or ethnic affiliations. The aforesaid negative traits played out in the 2015 general elections where the employed IT was manipulated to favour a particular political party and presidential candidate.

Second,as stated earlier registered voters data was non-existent for the 2015 elections. Printing of PVCs were accordingly discredited. Registration of underage voters and the disabled voters with less-than-10 fingers all contributed to undermine the integrity of the 2015 elections.

Every general election conducted after every four years demands an update of the registered voters’ data. Due to the absence of effective monitoring of births and deaths in our country, resulting in non-availability of data, the automatic update of voters register for each successive elections are regrettably impossible. Unscrupulous politicians make a capital of this national lapse.

However, before the elections of 2011 at the appointment of Professor Attahiru Jega, Nigerians witnessed the first ever e-capturing of registered voters data using the Direct Data Capturing Machine (DDCM). These DDCMs were used in all 119,873-registration centres in Nigeria to capture eligible voters’ data for the 2011 general elections. The resultant registered voters’ data was to commence the process of having elections that would be guided by a credible voters register.

Most regrettably the envisaged credible voters’ register, which was generated with huge resources using the DDCMs was corrupted with double registrations with same biometrics, using different pictures and names, e.t.c. INEC discovered these irregularities in the registered voters data used for the 2011 elections.

In the process of the first e- registration for the registered voters data, the data collected for each registrant were bio data, facial image, 10 finger prints (Template & Image), optional fields for those that possess National ID card and telephone numbers. The size of data captured for each eligible voter was approximately 1MB/voter. Each registrant has a unique identifier called Voter Identification Number (VIN) created in the system immediately after successful registration.