Friday, 07 January, 2011
Finally, the long awaited Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) training to build capacity among corps members towards the conduct of the 2011 voter registration and general elections has begun in my local government, Ogbomoso North. This is amidst news coming from Delta, where gubernatorial re-run elections are being held. Nothing but the same old story of ballot box snatching, kidnapping, gun-touting, and disenfranchisement.
Here is what one of my friends taken from Bayelsa to Delta for the elections had to say,
“I was almost kidnapped, I saw militants lyf in action. Corpers were hijacked with election materials. No security for corpers, and PDP did not win at all!”
Sad indeed.
This time however, one man seems to be the object of all blame, the INEC Chairman, Attahiru Jega. But wait a minute! Jega is just a man like all of us and elections are not the exclusive responsibility of one man or a group of people. I fear that we have, starting from the Delta re-run, started the process of ‘Jeganizing the elections’. What is ‘Jeganization?’ is the the state of mind where the electorate absolve themselves of all responsibility in the election and heap all blame on Jega; from late arrival of materials, to snatching of ballot boxes, to alteration of results at collation centres, etc. Begs the question, is Jega superman? Can he in a superhero burst of energy be everywhere? Do everything? Right every wrong? Well, maybe that was in his job description but I doubt if he’ll be able to live up to that. The pertinent question must be asked: where were the other election stakeholders? The observers, the party agents, the security agencies and the electorate are all absolved of blame as everything is heaped on the shoulders of Prof Jega. It hardly makes sense to me that snatching of ballot boxes is blamed neither on the Police or other security forces like the Airforce or Navy, but on Jega.
We have to wake up! We have to realize that as much responsibility lies on us as on Jega… nay, more. We are the ones physically in the centres; our votes at risk and our future at stake. ‘Jeganizing’ this election will not make anything go away, it will worsen things. I am fed up of all the nonsense going on and will perform my civic responsibility of registering to vote and voting, and as a corps member saddled with the responsibility of conducting the exercise, I’ll discharge my responsibility with the utmost sense of responsibility and love for this country. It is the much I can do, just do yours and leave some hapless INEC Chairman out of this, Will you?
Sunday, 09 January, 2011.
Today, the INEC the training has come to an end, but not before we all had a go at registering ourselves to get more familiar with the equipment and the registration software. It is pretty much straightforward, but it did not take long for us to realize that the process, which should take an average of three to five minutes, depending on the familiarity of the Registration Officer to local names, and typing speed, is considerably increased to fifteen or more minutes. All the extra time goes at the point where the ten finger prints of the registrants have to be captured. For some reason, the INEC in her wisdom decided to go for the finger print scanner that captures one finger at a time; I’m pretty sure there are types that capture all ten fingers in less than a minute, or at worse the five fingers of one hand. The problem this poses is at once obvious: with hundreds of people expected to be registered at each point daily, working from 8 am to 5 pm it means only about 54 people can hope to get registered in a day. Throw to this milieu the problem of language barrier in some centres, late arrival of officials, system malfunction of different sorts and some upheavals that could interrupt the process for any number of minutes and your guess is as good as mine as to the daily average of registrants whose data will be captured.
Well, I hope that somehow we’ll all learn on the job and become ingenious somehow… people must be given their right to vote.
More to come as the process kicks off. Cheers!
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