Nigeria: ReVoDa - Making Your Votes Count

Politicians barred from election monitoring

It appears that on Election Day political office holders as was customarily the case will not be able to travel round their constituencies as unauthorised election monitors [1], thereby exerting undue influence on the electoral process.

Many times we have seen these political office holders with their entourages and coterie of the sycophantic mob arrive at voting centres, disrupt the process and at times commandeer the ballot box and get all registrations put in their docket or cart away the ballot box to be stuffed with votes to give them office.

This time, the situation is different and according to the Resident Electoral Commissioner in Oyo State, Mr. Ayo Adakeja, none of the following people can act as party agents during the electoral process - local government chairmen, members of a local government, commissioners in a state, deputy governor, or governor of a state, minister or any other person holding political office under any tier of government.

Besides this, there are vehicular movement restrictions that apply to everyone on election days, this however becomes concerning if people have registered at polling units distant from their locations of residence or those who have registered in their home villages far away from their locations of residence that they cannot make the journey in time to get to vote on election day.

Banking on their impartiality

However, the issue of monitoring of the elections in April 2011 has in essence become a civic responsibility, everyone has to get involved, the employment of members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) [2] rather than civil servants and teacher who were previously pressganged into service, hopes to use the lack of local allegiance of the NYSC members to offer a façade of impartiality on the part of the agents of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) [3].

NYSC members are usually posted to locations other than their state of origin, a huge responsibility for the future of Nigeria is being placed on their shoulders to ensure that the voting process is transparent, free, fair, unhindered by any vested interests.

Making your votes count through reporting

The civic responsibility part comes with the launching of the ReVoDa [4] application produced by the EiE Nigeria's RSVP campaign [5] which allows for every voter who has a mobile phone to report the state of things at their polling unit.

For the first time, fully corroborated reports of activities at Polling Units can be collated to a central location which would include the Polling Unit Number and the name of the reporter of the event or activity and this should be admissible as part of evidence if electoral disputes should arise.

More importantly, it would hopefully serve as a deterrent to criminal activity since immediate citizen reporting can be done and probably would allow a prompt arresting of the situation before it becomes serious electoral malpractice.

RSVP voting without regrets

Having Registered, we are now going through the process of assessment and Selection of those vying for political office; do not commit or give allegiance until you have heard all sides and had your questions properly answered.

In April, you have the opportunity to Vote for your selections and then you need to take the next step of Protecting your vote to ensure that the popular democratic will of your community, locality, state and country is counted as the ballots indicate.

Download and Use ReVoDa

Avail yourselves of the opportunity of downloading ReVoDa [6] well before the electoral season, visit the site regularly for updates and information about how you too can be involved in ensuring your vote is protected all the way to when the results are announced.

ReVoDa appears very user-friendly with lots of drop-down menus to allow you make your reports of the Election Type, INEC Official, Materials Available, Voting & Accreditation, Votes Collation & Count, Result Announcement, Violence, Fraud and the tally of votes per party.

The democratic process in April 2011 is now squarely in the hands of the people and it is up to us to make it work, however, it can only work if every participates in the debates and discussions, in the voting, in the monitoring and in the reporting truthfully of all activities around the electoral process.

Make Your Vote Count and use all the tools you have to ensure they do count.

Sources

[1] » INEC bars govs, deputies, others from monitoring elections - Vanguard (Nigeria)

[2] National Youth Service Corp

[3] INEC Nigeria

[4] ReVoDa | How it works

[5] Good governance and Public accountability: EnoughisEnough Nigeria (EiE)

[6] Enough is Enough (EiE) Nigeria : ReVoDa – How to download the application

Nigeria: INEC Voter Registration Review VI

Still a logistical nightmare

This wraps up the long overdue final review of Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) voter registration exercise.

For three weeks in most places people assembled to register in participate in the elections scheduled for April 2011, in the last few days, those who had left it late having been poorly served by the faltering technology of the Digital Data Capture (DDC) computer machines, poor logistics and scanty material suddenly had the reprieve of another 2 day extension in 13 states of the federation.

Many will still be disenfranchised because up till the very last day, INEC was still hiring volunteers to man the registration process and that still did not get all the prospective registrants through, in the end out of the proposed 70 million eligible voters projected an estimated 64 million were captured by all these discrete systems.

Defensive opinions and offensive facts

The Chief Press Secretary of the INEC Chairman attempted what he called a “Contextual Review”[1] of the registration exercise and given that it was a humongous logistical exercise fraught with all sorts of issues that many activist highlight and in ways helped alleviate, his assessment was hardly the kind of independent and objective review one would have expected as the context seemed to rail against the cynics, sceptics and the concerned who picked out the flaws in the whole exercise.

The review was as defensive as anyone could get about what a participant might have involved themselves in whilst pretending to great success that many observers would have qualified closer to a barely passed grade but he is entitled to his opinion but not to his own facts.

Voters’ List review

The week beginning the 14^th of February 2011 saw the 5-day review of the voters’ list where corrections, objections and collections were the themes according to INEC guidelines [2].

Despite the biometric acquisition of the data, none of it appeared online and many polling unit centres did not get to display the said lists and very few did get to see any list according to news reports [3] and such displays [Picture of a list displayed a at Polling Unit in Lagos State] did not engender confidence.

What was more alarming about where people found the lists displayed was exemplified in the following Tweets.

StanVito Now this is strange. The #INECRegistration list displayed in in my estate can't be real. My name isn't on the list? Some1 got 2 b shitting me

StanVito This #INECRegistration Voter list shows only those registered in Feb. No one registered in Jan is on this list.

This highlights a number of issues, if the lists displayed are those for their respective Polling Units, where they are if the said lists do have all that registered or those whose registration was considered valid that includes the 10-fingerprint scan and if corrections were made for situations where data might have been lost and no remediation made for lost registrations.

Concerns about lists

One can only wonder about those who had not bothered to take the verification exercise seriously and check that their names were on the lists and that their data was correct before checking for other kinds of errors considering INEC had stated it would not extend [4] the list verification exercise whilst we take into account that this was a working week, apart from the religious holiday on the Tuesday.

Meanwhile, INEC also released the list of candidates for political office to the public but that exercise was hardly decisive [5] with the INEC constantly reviewing its opinions about eligibility and the incessant haranguing from the courts that the risk of the electorate having choices out of a bad lot because of a botched eligibility process presaged a rotten representative democracy.

INEC intends to have compiled a usable voters’ register [6] by the 2^nd of March 2011 having eliminated duplicate registrations and other irregularities borne from flawed registrations through to criminality that included the impounding of a DDC machine in the home of member of the House of Representatives long after the registration exercise had ended.

An exorbitant democracy

The cost of this exercise [7] is estimated at $580 million with a unit cost of almost $9 per voter and this does not guarantee a free and fair election, in fact, it does not guarantee a credible voters’ register and INEC is already suggesting that it does not have sufficient funds [8] to conduct the elections.

In the midst of this apparent squander for democracy is the positive news relayed in a video news report [9] by the Al Jazeera English network about an ex-Google executive who single-handed coded the software used for the registration exercise with the use of volunteers.

What Nigeria has tried to do is squeeze into three months what normally takes a year and at one time had Nigeria’s short-term demand for DDC equipment exceed the global supply (PDF file) [10].

Our revolution

The first hurdle of the Register | Select | Vote | Protect process [11] has barely been sterling however one would hope that those who did register would not find to their shock in April that they cannot vote.

However, Nigerians need to begin assessing the people who seek to represent them and make informed decisions about who they will be voting for whilst keeping others around them enthusiastic about the revolution that is before us, the opportunity to have free and fair elections in April 2011 with the promise of good government.

Sources

[1] Voter Registration: A Contextual Review by Kayode Idowu

[2] INEC Releases Guidelines for Display of Preliminary Register of Voters

[3] Voter verification lists hard to find in Nigeria - Yahoo! News

[4] » Voter verification: INEC says no extension of deadline - Vanguard (Nigeria)

[5] INEC, courts make ‘fast’ money from candidates’ list

[6] » Voters’ register ready March 2- Jega - Vanguard (Nigeria)

[7] Nigeria's elections: A list a mile long | The Economist

[8] » INEC budget: N45bn not enough – Jega - Vanguard (Nigeria)

[9] YouTube - Millions register for Nigeria vote

[10] INEC Account of Acquisition Process

[11] Good governance and Public accountability : Enough is Enough Nigeria (EiE)

Nigeria: INEC Voter Registration Review V

It ends tomorrow

We are coming to the close of the third week of voters’ registration in Nigeria; the exercise was after much anxiety extended for another week just 24 hours to the end of the original 14-day plan.

When the INEC Chairman met the Joint Committee on Electoral Matters at the Nigerian National Assembly he suggested that just one extra week would be needed to clear the backlog of unregistered possible voters.

Numbers and fumblers

The projection was to register 70 million Nigerians for the April 2011 elections, at the end of the two week period it was said that 59 million had been registered at the rate of 4.3 million people a day, however, with 48 hours to run, this number was revised downwards with 54.9 million having been registered at the rate of 3.2 million people a day.

Which #INECRegistration figure is right? 59m in 14 days http://j.mp/gKtZxS or 54.9m in 19 days? http://j.mp/igSFH5

That great discrepancy in figures is worrisome because it suggests the estimators were out by 1.1 million people per day, meaning that at the end of the first 14 day period, the figures were grossly inflated by 14.2 million prospective voters.

Many will lose out

Looking at the figures, it then suggests that about 44.8 million voters were registered by Saturday the 29^th of January 2011 and by the 3^rd of February 2011 another 10.1 million voters had been added to the tally leaving an estimated 15.1 million Nigerians left to avail themselves of registration in the last 48 hours.

There is no way that number would be catered for and it appears INEC might just get to 62 million at best with 8 million seemingly disenfranchised and that might be due to a number of factors from poor logistics and planning (observed as overcrowded polling units), malfunctioning registration equipment or procrastination and apathy on the part of Nigerians.

#INECregistration, We are down to one DDC for now. The second one's overheating so it's been shut down to receive 'fresh air'.

The Punch: Relocate DDC machines to populous areas in Lagos’:http://bit.ly/ftCTw7 via @addthis #INECRegistration

bubusn If INEC won't move less crowded units around, we'll move people around to them. #INECRegistration

There is probably no case for extending the registration period beyond the 5^th of February 2011, we had all been adequately informed, it could have been properly planned for, the people could have taken time to ensure that they were registered despite the frustrating situations they might have encountered and it could have been dealt with, with a great sense of civic responsibility for what the 2011 elections mean for Nigeria.

@bubusn @inecnigeria How much of the #INECRegistration issues are due to INEC or are due to people who did not prioritise this activity?

Champion Newspapers http://bit.ly/h9h0Q2 The governor ofAnambra State only just performed his #INECRegistration yesterday2/2/11

The same problems again

The logistics issues remained but not as grave as they were at the beginning, it was more about the inadequate supply of DDC machines to meet the demand and a few instances of the inability of the registered to collect their cards and where they have, the cards may not have been laminated.

AkwaImoh #INECRegistration some centres in my Location are not laminating the Voters Card. And this doesn't help people because it will be hard to maintain

Some criminality had also been observed of people being charged to register or print their cards, in other cases people were registering in order to sell their cards to the highest bidder.

nelsonisibor Today I experienced first-hand how party agents when unchecked can hijack #INECregistration, it's like a 'film trick'.

The Sun News On-line |Voters’ #INECRegistration: Oyo police arrest PDP chieftain with 25 underage students http://bit.ly/dWq9Rkvia @addthis

That latter situation should if the technical specification of the registration dynamics are as we are told root out people who are using false identities because pictures and fingerprints have to match to validate a voter and allow the person participate in voting.

However, there would be many who would try to game the system.

It is not mandatory

The illegalities include making having a voter’s registration card to access goods and services in Nigeria, that is unconstitutional; it is within the rights of each citizens to decide to participate in the electoral process or not. However, if such a person does not participate, it would be of concern if the said person then feels they have assumed the right to criticise how they are governed.

Mandatory Voter #INECRegistration Unconstitutional: A Judiciary For Sale! http://bit.ly/eXONhy via @addthis

amasonic A voters' card is meant for voting, not as a requirement when seeking for employment #inecregistration

Processing the data

The next stage which could be fraught with issues is the collation of the voters register where the data on the DDC machines and the external hard disks are fed into the super computer that would process all the information and eventually produce a voters list that can be inspected by users.

If INEC do in fact capture 88% of the electorate and the turnout for elections exceeds 70% of that number, we might well have the makings of credible elections if the votes are counted as the voters have intended.

@EngrMuza @sfladipo @nnabros It shows that after #INECRegistration we have to keep the pressure on to Select, Vote & Protect #RSVP

There is one day left and it is worrisome to hear that there are many especially amongst the youth who have not risen to the revolutionary opportunity to rise, speak up and let their voices be heard about the direction of their country.

BSKukawa I think Nigerians need to be educated on their rights. #INECRegistration

nelsonisibor #INECregistration Tomorrow, I'm mobilizing a hundred friends who are yet to register. We’ll be @ different PU's as early as 5am to get a head start.

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: 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