Nigeria: The Revolution has already begun

The cry for revolution is shrill

I have suffered to my hurt and discomfort the many cries for revolution in Nigeria. Everyone seems to have an opinion about change for Nigeria; be it splitting up the country to sending the current crop of leaders to an early grave in order to clear the air for new growth.

Once again, it can be so easy to list all the problems with Nigeria, the great potential squandered by the selfish interests of those who on assumption of power are too intoxicated to walk straight, think right and act determined for the progress of the country.

The spirit of profligacy and kleptomania possesses the leaders to the point that rampant acquisition beyond needs leaves their bank accounts heavier than the treasury of the country – we have been sorely lead and badly served, indeed, something needs to give.

We are NOT like the others

There are some that wish for the clear-out that Jerry Rawlings offered Ghana with the execution of three of his predecessors, it did appear to purge Ghana of some of the poison and rottenness that was engulfing it, but Nigeria does not have a Jerry Rawlings.

The nearest example to that might have been Mohammadu Buhari in the early 80’s but in his zest to improve the country, it was slowly being turned into an Islamic police state, it prepared the way for even worse leadership that has held Nigeria hamstrung since.

One could say that the worst times in Nigeria were during the time of the military despot, Sani Abacha who by the grace of God expired in a sexual orgy which presaged the preparation of democratic rule just a year after in 1999.

Our ruler-ship is not homogenous

However, it is left for one to wonder about the ends of a revolution in Nigeria, we have not been under the cosh of or autocratic regimes like the Arabic states of North Africa where leaders have been in charge forever, chief amongst whom is Muammar al-Gadhafi of Libya. Nor have we suffered the false democracies of Uganda or Zimbabwe there has been a musical chairs of the ruling elite in Nigeria.

In some cases, they all seem to be of the same ilk, it is not like Nigeria has some popular leader of opposition in exile waiting to take the mantle of leadership when the revolution has toppled those in power.

The revolution talk is fraught with serious problems because the leadership clique is not homogenous, it is composed of competing interests regional, religious, political, economic and social.

None seem to have the wherewithal to coalesce for a common good because of egotistical megalomaniacs who only understand compromise and consensus in terms of the former being their lead and the latter being their view, none of which is negotiable.

After revolution comes anarchy

In other words, there might well be a revolution but no leader to reap the fruits of the revolution; we might well end up in anarchy with a rapidly deteriorating state of affairs as these competing interests jostle for position, opportunity, power and the do-or-die grab for the spoils.

We do need reform and change; we need a common goal for the good of Nigeria, preserving the entity and the identity that makes us proud Nigerians.

However, the good people have not stepped forward and for good reason many who might cannot bear the snake-pit of politics to sully their good intentions, plan and possibly progressive policies for Nigeria.

We are not suited for the usual revolutions

Nigeria is by no means ripe for a revolution, there are no components in place to make it the success we desire with blind optimism, we can do well to educate ourselves, participate fully in the democratic process we have, deign to hold the elected accountable and become better and coherent activists that demand positive action or expect the said leaders to resign in disgrace.

We are plagued with leaders of old who have refused to retire, whilst one cannot pray – death come swiftly and take them away, until we rise to assumed greater responsibility we would be belittled and patronised by those who through arrogance and hubris think they are the best gifts to Nigeria when they are in fact the worst things to be inflicted on our long-suffering people.

Your revolution is in RSVP

Pray, if you might, fast, if you will, but until we all take up the mantle of civic responsibility by registering to vote; selecting those we can trust and hold accountable; vote for those who have not tried to usurp the system, whose character is beyond reproach and competence is verifiably vouched for and stood to protect the voice of our collected efforts of choosing our leaders our revolution would be too far away in the future to grasp and too high an aspiration to attain.

Register | Select | Vote | Protect [1] without regrets your revolution by participating in democratic change for great change and accountability – the protection part does not end when the results are declared, it continues for the duration of the term of that elected representative and any other connected interest that should be working for the good and progress of the country.

Nigeria’s revolution is not in the template of marching the streets with civil disorder to upset the as it were status quo, our Green Revolution is in making the best of what we have now, take the democratic bull by the horns and not relenting until the will of the people is fully expressed and accepted in free, fair, credible and viable elections.

Our revolution has started already, are you in the move to change your country for the good?

Source

[1] EiE NIGERIA: Register | Select | Vote | Protect

Nigeria: INEC Voter Registration Review IV

There is much to be done

With two days left for the voters’ registration it is becoming evident that everyone who needs to register might not get that opportunity.

The past weekend offered the opportunity for many to turn up and register but the process was fraught with many reports of printing problems as a result of exhausted ink cartridges.

The sadder aspect of this was that INEC in most cases did not have stocks of spare ink cartridges that the registered voters had to wait for days to collect their registration cards. Some more resourceful Nigerians paid for ink cartridges themselves.

The power issues do not seem to have dominated the news wires anymore because the same resourceful Nigerians have provided power through generators or extension cables to help keep the process moving.

A probable extension looms

The queues are however getting longer and though the process of registration is easier and faster, it is unlikely that those who have left it so late would gain a reprieve without an extension of the voters’ registration exercise.

To this end, the legislative houses have tentatively agreed to an extension having met with the INEC Chairman who said he needs another week and NGN 6.6 billion extra to do this.

One is taken aback that INEC could have exhausted their budget without contingencies that they have to return cap-in-hand to seek more funding.

The figures bandied around indicate that less than 50% of the expected populace that fall within voting age are registered; it would in the long run lead to questions about the credibility of the elections whilst allowing for opportunities to rig the elections.

Fingered errors

At the meeting of the legislators we learnt that the original registration of the president at his hometown did not include his fingerprints and that he had to do it again.

Amelioration processes for entering fingerprints for those registered without then in the first place seem to have problems, you can check of all your fingerprints have been captured on your card by checking is the 5 small squares on either side of your photograph on your voter’s card are black or hollow squares. They need to be dark for your registration to be valid.

The Chairman also volunteered after having stated on BBC Africa Have Your Say; that amputees and those with special needs would be catered for that there really was no provision for them, which is sad.

Another issue that has raised concern is that of Muslim women in religious garb that includes the covering of the face. Some are advocating their right to be registered which is inalienable but how do you recognise the face of someone behind a veil? There is a need for common-sense and reasonableness in terms of religious adherence and the understanding ones civics responsibilities which invite some compromise.

Security issues were prevalent, some machine were stolen and found in the strangest of places, Youth Corps members were attacked by agree crowds and some INEC personnel have lost their lives, which is unfortunate.

Security issues were prevalent, some machine were stolen and found in the strangest of places, Youth Corps members were attacked by agree crowds and some INEC personnel have lost their lives, which is unfortunate.

Reconstituting an extension

However, the most critical matter has to be the one of the extension of the voters’ registration exercise beyond Saturday the 29^th of January 2011. Some had irresponsibly announced on Twitter that it had been extended for 4 weeks when that was not the case.

There are serious constitutional provisions for the extension, INEC was running this exercise on a very tight schedule, and the registration as far as the Electoral Act 2010 is concerned expects that the exercise be completed no later than 60 days before the election that utilises the register putting the last possible date at the 2^nd of February 2011.

The legislature would either have had to shorten that duration between registration and elections or reschedule the election timetable after which INEC can announce the extension.

Government 101 and Project Management

The issue of the closed schools also came up since in most cases school premises were not in use and professional teachers were not engaged in the registration process. There are reasons why the schools have remained closed but for the Senate to order the Minister of Education to open to the schools rather than advise her of the need to smacked of an overreach of the Separation of Powers.

The infancy of our democratic process is so evident with poor appreciation of the rule of law, the egress of the lack of understanding of the Separation of Powers and feeling that grandstanding equals due process.

If this INEC Voter Registration process fails it would clearly be a case of atrocious Project Management on an appalling scale, there probably is a way to redeem this exercise but it requires that Nigerians who have not registered turn out in droves to register showing there is much to be done, that they will not be disenfranchised and forcing the necessary extension to capture the majority of the voting population to act for choosing the government they want and deserve.

References with developing stories

Nigerian #INECRegistration BiDaily – Published AM & PM with an average of 150 contributions

Reps amend Electoral Act to allow more time for registration | 234Next.com

Voter Registration: INEC Has No Right To Extend Time

Voter registration: Jega wants N6.6bn for extension | Tribune Nigeria

» Voters’ Registration: Lagos suspends restriction of movement on sanitation day - Vanguard (Nigeria)

If #INECRegistration should stop no longer than 60 days before elections, it cannot be extended beyond 02/02/2011 http://j.mp/fBcPUi Page 3

#INECRegistration Has No Right To Extend Time http://bit.ly/eB4D5M Constitutional issue could include changing election timetable.

Nigeria: INEC - One finger is enough 10 fingers is insanity

Edited and updated.

One little finger, thank you

I think it is time to get beyond unnecessary analysis to the practicalities of the matter of what improvement in data-quality is offered by having 10 fingerprints or one thumbprint as part of the biometric identification for the Nigerian voter registration exercise.

One is at a loss for the why 10 fingerprints are necessary, it appears a demonstration of the digital data capture process had excited the decision-makers that they went for the full capability of the system rather than weighing in very crucial factors of speed, efficiency, throughput, validity and uniqueness.

Evidence is usual not 10 fingers

Over a hundred years of usage, fingerprint evidence has helped criminology well and though DNA analysis seems to have become a finer tool for forensic criminology, it has not completely obviated the need fingerprint capture at the crime scene.

Generally, the 10 fingers are only captured for police documents or in this age of paranoia regarding terrorism at certain points of entry around the globe.

I hate to think that this voter registration exercise has been sold to the election commission as a dual-purpose function to be shared with the security agencies in Nigeria and probably the Interpol; which for all intents and purposes can be very helpful to crime solving, but it should not have featured at all in the primary exercise of voter registration.

The issue of civil liberties probably has not gained enough traction as to the sensitivity of this kind of data, who would eventually have access to it, how it would be secured, if citizens have right of access to modify or delete their information and much more.

Which finger did it bite?

In the scheme of things when one reads of reports of registrants failing to obtain the fingerprint differentiator as part of their voter registration exercise because the 10^th finger does not scan frustration is compounded.

So far, we have read that the ex-president of Nigeria and the current Senate president have been unable to obtain their voter registration cards, it is not clear if this is because none of their fingers could be scanned or some could not be scanned.

That is beside the point, the registration exercise has so many points of failure and has been made unduly complicated that it offers the opportunity to truncate or circumvent the process.

Bad data awaiting good challenge

My fear is that vexatious litigious politicians who are too regularly up to mischief might put a spanner in the works by requiring all voter registrations without the cumbersome and unnecessary 10-fingerprint excess of data be voided either at the voter registration review or after voting is exercised if they feel they can gain some political advantage.

It is incumbent on INEC to revisit this issue immediately and recalibrate the system whilst issuing new instructions only to do a single thumb capture. It is not like Nigerians are prone to losing their fingers that by April, they might need another finger to authenticate themselves at the time of voting.

Reality strikes

The other matter that has not been addressed is how this data would be retrieved at the time of voting, would the registrant have to check each finger against the database or would one finger suffice?

The absurdity of this whole thing only becomes so evident by looking at how the data would supposedly be put to use, how much processing is needed to check one finger out of 10 for a matching finger or all fingers in a particular order.

We do not need complex solutions for simple actions, the voters register does not have to match the security requirement for atomic-grade weapons activation or access to the Fort Knox vaults – in my humble opinion, this 10 finger salute to authentication is an overkill and that does not begin to describe that waste of time, resources and productivity that defines what could easily be a more efficient way of doing easy tasks.

Let us be smart about this – ONE THUMB is enough 10 fingers is madness raised to the power of insanity.

Sources

Fingerprint - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nigeria: INEC Voter Registration Review I

Get involved

At the beginning of Day 3 of the Nigerian INEC Voter Registration exercise, it is time to take stock of the Successes, Opportunities, Failings and Threats (SOFT) situation and plan for the remaining 13 days of this exercise.

I will start with an admonition and encouragement taken from the website of Reclaim Naija Project [1] – “Please don’t just sit in your house and complain about bad government, bad leaders, bad roads, poor electricity supply, poor health care, poor quality schools, the corrupt police, kidnapping, armed robbery and other bad things happening in our country.”

This is a warning against apathy and a statement to encourage all Nigerians with opportunity to get up, get involved, participate and rally with others who want to see a change in our dear country.

It is working, but …

Pictures captured on the Nigerian INEC Registration BiDaily [2] show that people have successfully gone through the process of registration which has resulted in handling an Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Voter’s Card, but this activity has been fraught with problems.

The issues of preparation were myriad from people unsure of where they were to register to them arriving at centres long before the personnel had arrived and many centres opened really late. It appears for such a massive national project the logistical, training, risk mitigation and contingency issues were not properly addressed.

Failings in logistics were unfortunate because INEC could have piggy-backed on courier organisations like DHL, or cash security movement firms, even manufacturing networks of Dangote Cement or CocaCola could have been co-opted to deliver staff and materials to their respective venues on time.

The setup

Along with that, it appears the kit that included a laptop, a printer, a fingerprint scanner, a web camera, a laminator, a USB hub, an external hard disk and a battery were almost a conundrum of technology to setup to work correctly, some personnel did not have cables to connect up the systems.

That was fundamentally appalling; their handlers should have ensured there was a checklist review of all the different components before the personnel left their bases without assuming everything was correctly packaged.

After setup, it was discovered that in some cases the battery packs were not charged and there were no backup battery packs, I can only wonder who the project managers of this exercise were and who recommended the equivalent of going on a long Nigerian journey without a spare tyre – with one battery powering the printer and the laptop when all attached devices take their power feeds, the power drain would be faster than the generally accepted battery life of a few hours.

Could there have been solar-powered solutions too? One wonders but this was not an exercise that could be done on the cheap and so present preventable failures.

Familiarity and ease of use

The operating system on the laptops is Linux based, the personnel might well be familiar or unfamiliar with this environment but this could create bottlenecks and there were instances of these personnel forgetting their passwords and hence being unable to access their systems, the pressure of having people queue up ready for registration whilst the personnel were fumbling with logging on could not have engendered a stress-free environment.

Once the systems were setup, people could approach the personnel sit in from of the computer and facilitate the recording of their personal data. Obviously, people how had ID cards make the job easier because confusing spelling could be easily hold up the process, the dialog interface was however not as user-easy as it could have been.

The gender selection list should have been a radio-box to select either male or female and not a drop-down box – there is an instance where a male voter was registered as female.

All 8 fingers and 2 thumbs? Really?

The most troublesome aspect of the exercise centred on the fingerprint scanner and quite a number of issues arose from it not working to it not being sensitive enough to detect the whorls that define the fingerprint.

The technical issues first determined that in certain instances the driver of the fingerprint scanner was not loaded, without this, the fingerprint scanner will not work.

Where the fingerprint scanner was working but not able to identify the finger whorls, it was determined that hands need to be washed and cleaned as well as having the pick-up on the scanner wiped clean too.

I was surprised to see that all 8 fingers and 2 thumbs had to be scanned, the need for such a data set is questionable; when you combine the specific details of the person with a single thumbprint the probability that the same can be recreated elsewhere with a new uniqueness has to have a very low probability.

10 fingers is definitely data-uniqueness and data-quality gone mad, whilst a match would undoubtedly be without dispute considering the finicky issues of capturing just one finger and the throughput of processing large crowds with the limitations presented by the setup which has its weakest link at the power supply – this is unfortunate.

It would have been better to have a hand scanner or a 10-fingerprint scanner rather than the low-sensitivity single-digit scanner for all 10 digits in turn – on some videos I saw, a finger could take a good few minutes to register.

This arrangement might have served well for small numbers of people in little offices but not for a mass voter registration campaign.

Process and processing

Again, it has taken the resourcefulness, improvisation and initiative of Nigerians to ameliorate a poorly planned process that might have seemed to test well in laboratory settings but fell apart in the field – the charlatans that put this together must never get another hearing for their hare-brained schemes and snake-oil remedies again.

I was engaged in a Facebook face-off with an old school colleague of mine and there I learnt someone had walked off with his voter registration card without presenting fingerprints. Naturally, that registration should be void except where there other distinguishing data has been recorded to maintain data uniqueness.

On a well-designed system, the algorithm should have had specific prerequisites fulfilled before the process moved to the next stage and the print function should not have been enabled if the fingerprints had not yet been captured.

After the form has been printed out, the card needs to be cut out; this could have been pre-perforated paper that was easy to tear than having to handle scissors; the risk of forgeries appearing more professional looking than the real thing is there.

In all, the whole exercise is picking up and working, the personnel appear to be optimistic and enthusiastic, Twitter is alive with reports and the Ushahidi platform is deployed to capture issues mapped to locations.

Tips and more

@bubusn suggests

Tweeting about registration issues? Format: "#INECRegistration "

#INECRegistration You can find the "PU Number" on the silver box that the corpers use to carry the DDC machines

#INECRegistration Tip for the ladies: There's a special line for women. You get to register faster!

And something we all have to keep in mind - #INECRegistration Anyone can win an argument about how terrible Nigeria is. But only great ppl can help before pointing fingers. That is the spirit.

Post tweets with at least the #INECRegistration hashtag, you can also use #RSVP, it helps to monitor what is going and important issues might get captured in the BiDaily.

See NIGERIA 2011 ELECTIONS: CAN INEC DO IT? ~ NIGERIAN CURIOSITY for another perspective on the 2 days of registration.

We all have our hands on deck, this registration exercise must succeed and we need every improvisation we can get to make it work, whatever you can do to help would be welcome, drinks and food for the personnel, extension cables when the batteries conk out and loads of patience.

Register | Select | Vote | Protect – we are in the first critical stage of reclaiming Nigeria for Nigerians and going back to the age-old definition of democracy – the government of the people by the people for the people – it starts with your registration and by all means make time, never leave it to the last minute.

Sources

[1] Reclaim Naija | Your Vote is Your Power

[2] Nigerian INEC Registration BiDaily

Nigeria: Seeing RSVP at the PDP Primaries

The convention

The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) the ruling party in Nigeria conducted their presidential primaries from yesterday through to the very early hours of this morning and it must be lauded as an historic occasion and probably a seminal event.

After all the politicking, horse-trading and whatever else our cynicism can conjure up they gathered at the great Eagle Square in Abuja, hours late but determined to ensure the business of the day was started and completed.

There were three candidates, a lady, Dr. Sarah Jubril; the former vice-president Atiku Abubakar and the sitting president Goodluck Jonathan – the stage was set for a microcosm of what one hopes would be the play out of the national elections in April 2010.

Each contestant had the opportunity to appeal, persuade or cajole their constituencies and then each delegate was given the opportunity to vote.

Protecting the vote

With 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory as constituencies, each had their accredited delegates cast their ballots secretly in ballot boxes assigned to their respective states, after this was done, initially the first 4 states were counted in alphabetical order then randomly.

The count was public, visible and audible, the boxes were for each state were brought to the enumerator’s table, the returning officer asked to certified the accredited delegates and the voting delegates and then each ballot which had handwritten names of the candidates was inspected, called out and separated into piles for each announced candidate after which the ballots were counted and tabulated.

When the last ballot was counted, all the counts were collated and the results announced; from the staging of this historic event, there was very little to dispute apart from the need to ease of voting by using tick boxes and not the writing of names which included one ballot in Arabic script and probably some speed at the job by introducing some technology.

However, this was not to take away from the occasion, it could be termed as the freest and fairest political voting activity ever done on Nigerian soil, it was transparent, open, visible and viewed globally, we all participated either physical there through the news correspondents and via social networking forums as Twitter and Facebook.

RSVP with no regrets

In the same vein, Nigerians are working to create the same quality of suffrage accompanied with free and fair elections exemplified in the Enough is Enough initiative [1] with the acronym RSVP.

This ground-breaking initiative has the ultimate goal of accountable democracy in Nigeria borne of the true will of the people being represented at local government, state and federal levels – it requires at all Nigerians participate in moving from apathy to engagement, involvement and civic responsibility – it is aspirational and should be within our grasp.

The goal is simple.

Register – Ensure you are registered where you should be and validated as a true member of the electorate.

Select – Inform yourself about the candidates vying for your votes, check their policies, their views, their goals, their motives and if given the opportunity ask the hard questions and do not fobbed off with soft answers. Most importantly, you are not for sale or to be used as bargaining chips for ulterior ends.

Vote – Go out and have a say in the selecting the people who will well represent you at all levels of government, exercise the right to seek accountability.

Protect – this is where it all begins to make sense, ensuring your voice is heard, your vote is counted and not stolen by criminal elements ready to subvert the democratic process for their rotten machinations – this is where Nigerian democracy needs to attain the label of free, fair and beyond dispute. Only we Nigerians can achieve this and enforce this, observers can only observe; Nigerians can ensure that the rules, the letter and the spirit of the elections are observed.

What we saw

Now the RSVP arrangement that the PDP Presidential primaries adopted seems to have been read RSVP backwards, there is the pre-electioneering phase of reading RSVP forwards and the post-electioneering phase of reading it backwards.

In conducting a public, visible and audible count of the votes, they Protected to the full, the will expressed by the delegates, there was no dispute about the votes cast, the numbers tallied and the ones voided, any challenge to that spectacle would have been foolhardy at best.

The secret ballots with the writing of the names of the candidates on the ballot papers meant that the delegates had to know why they were in the voting booths and had to identify clearly which ballot box their vote had to go into. The matter of whether it was a vote of conscience, conviction or compulsion is beside the point, there was no coercion at point of the exercise of their franchise, they Voted freely.

What we need

The horse-trading that went into the Selection process can be open to dispute but one thing was evident, despite Atiku Abubakar putting himself forward as the consensus candidate of the North, he lost his home state 71% to his opponent, as far as the results went on to show, Goodluck Jonathan was the consensus candidate for whatever division of Nigeria you are inclined to entertain, but as far as the national delegates of ruling party were concerned, Goodluck Jonathan commanded broad and widespread national support in the entity that is one Nigeria.

The Registration process of the delegates was fraught with powerplays and influence, that cannot be avoided, but Nigerians can prevent that situation when they go to register from tomorrow the 15^th of January 2011 to the 29^th of January 2011 – they should ensure they are informed of what is needed to register, ensure all the unique identifying characteristics that represent them are properly recorded and on review of the register, they should ensure their names are as they should be.

For Nigerians, it starts with registration and may this be the dawning of a new accountable democracy in this great country of ours.

God bless Nigeria!

Sources

[1] EiE NIGERIA: Register | Select | Vote | Protect