Nigeria: INEC Voter Registration Review III

Over the last 7 days

A complete 7-day review of the Nigerian INEC Voter’s Registration campaign brings mixed results, there have been many successes, people in pictures holding up their voter’s registration cards, some completing the activity well under 10 minutes and closer to home my father and siblings having a hitch free registration experience within the first few days.

However, in this hugely logistical national exercise where INEC has called on resources that it assumed it could rely on without adequate checks and controls, there were going to be many failings and those threatened to derail the whole exercise, exacerbate residual apathy, frustrate many and allow for all sorts of nefarious activity.

Rugged fingers cannot linger

Soon we discovered that the scanning equipment had been over-calibrated in such a way that it could not clearly distinguish the whorls of the fingerprints, this required a software patch, we also learnt hands had to be washed clean, some even cleaned with methylated spirit and then the illogical idea of passing the hands through sand before the fingerprint scans – it was like any crazy idea would do.

The frustration with the fingerprint scans lead to some polling units short-circuiting the workflow by registering people without the requisite fingerprint scans. Rumours were rife about all sorts of unconfirmed directives but with the force of social networking we were able to get a definitive answer of the INEC chairman when he appeared on the BBC Africa Have Your Say programme.

All voter registration cards issued without the requisite 10-fingerprint scans were grossly deficient and considered VIOD. Such persons with deficient registrations were advised to return to their polling unit to effect a correction to their registration status.

A battery of failing ink-jets

Beyond that once the patches sped up the registration process the Digital Data Capture machines sometimes froze requiring a reboot, in certain other cases the data was lost but the more serious issue centred around presumably fully-charged batteries running out of power for the laptop and printers – some polling units enjoyed the goodwill of the citizens with the provision of power generators but many other polling units had to close for the day.

Where some did get their data on the systems, the printers had run out of ink or there wasn’t sufficient power to run both the laptop and the printer, they people had to return at another time to collect their registration cards.

The INEC Chairman said the area centres managing the polling unit regions had recharging facilities for the batteries, one would have expected there would be spare batteries and ink cartridges but the proper management of those components seemed to be lacking, in some cases the INEC personnel who mainly consisted of members of the National Youth Corps Service (NYSC) lost some components and the lax security also meant batteries went missing.

No pay and bad days

Sadly, in what is typical of the Nigerian labour market, the NYSC members were part of the critical resource that could celebrate the success of the INEC project, but INEC was rather grudging in encouraging them, first by blaming them for failings that were clearly the poor planning of INEC who also should have worked with the banking sector to expedite the tedious banking processes that held up payments to these industrious and enthusiastic Nigerians for up to 6-days into the registration exercise.

In settings like this, some Nigerians defaulted to electoral criminality; one instance had machines stolen only to reappear with 2,000 registrants with seemingly matching fingerprints. Some machines were stolen but the thieves were soon apprehended.

Dooms to the hoodlums

The more worrisome parts of the criminality were party agents commandeering positions at the polling units to get their members registered first, again, the technological constraints of power, batteries and ink running out could have made some people want to get in first.

Certain INEC personnel got beaten up by irate crowds, a few others might have come to an untimely death leading to a shoot-to-kill policy being adopted in Jos to deal with people who fail to be law abiding and conforming to the order required to facilitate a smooth registration.

When certain party agents seized the registration documents to copy the names and addresses of the registrants that would have been the time to bring on the cavalry and march the culprits down to secure lockups for an indeterminate period of time.

Some NYSC members protested going on strike, this was certainly avoidable but unfortunate but even after a full week of registrations it is sad to learn that some areas in Nigeria still have not caught sight of any INEC personnel or prospect of registration.

Nigerian logistics and planning

With about 132,000 DDC machines deployed nationwide and another 12,000 going out this weekend, there is hope that everyone who needs to be registered will get registered.

With all the issues that have dogged the initial registration process, there is a prospect of extending the registration period; it should not stop Nigerians from crowding out the polling units to show the enthusiasm and willingness to embrace change and the readiness to perform their civic duty.

We should not leave it all to the last minute, there is much to do and the early we go out to get registered the surer we can be that it would be done eventually and more importantly successfully.

Hope on the ropes of networking

On the whole, the take up has been good, the response has been enthusiastic, people are encourage and persuaded, the week has been a qualified success and looking into the next week, there sure is a lot more that can be done to make it even better.

Twitter has been a useful resource with the exercise bearing the #INECRegistration hashtag and well over 3,000 tweets have been posted.

The #RSVP project have logged issues around the country on the EiENigeria.org website a sample of the relevant tweets appear below along with the Nigerian #INECRegistration BiDaily that I published and a rival daily that aggregates similar material.

We look forward to the next 8 days with great expectations and the opportunity to make Nigeria become the country of our dreams.

Sample Twitter Feeds

forakin Find your local #INECRegistration centre here - Zoom in the GoogleMap to your Nigerian Polling Unit (INEC) -http://bit.ly/ewXgvA

eolutosin RT @dfasoro: Mobile Booth Finder: http://t.co/WybtTSY @Possicon@eolutosin @theglobalchild @wumidiji #INECregistration #RSVP #IfNaijaVotes

forakin It is imperative your #INECRegistration includes your 10-fingerprint scans or it is VOID. Return to your centre to correct the situation.

RT @bubusn #INECRegistration BIG weekend. This weekend. Help where you can. Let show community spirit. Something good can come out of Naija.

eolutosin no battery and therefore no work today.#INECRegistration officials just relaxing n enjoying d moment. Centre is M http://twitpic.com/3s03ni

bubusn My #EiENigeria #INECregistration interview with BBC Network Africa: http://bbc.in/1iL6JA (from 22:12 mins).

Possicon #inecregistration An ACN member just provided Generator to power the machines here

Possicon If u don’t know ur polling booth, check here: http://www.enoughisenoughnigeria.com/blog/?p=849 #inecregistration

gbengasesan #INECregistration tip: If you're posting a picture of your Voter's Card, please cover your home address. Except it's not where you live :)

eolutosin Well, they are being paid the allowance now. One of the#INECRegistration corps members just came. RT @rosanwo: @eolutosin any remedy?

forakin Can't understand how #INECRegistration don't realise the Youth Corpers are critical to the success of this exercise and not pay them yet.

forakin RT @bubusn @Sadiq_Hamid It's harder to rig elections with a massive voter turnout & all political parties running #RSVP#INECRegistration

forakin @OtobiBABA Go and do your #INECRegistration & if you believe the person you want to vote for should have a chance, get out and campaign too.

EiENigeria #INECRegistration. Its day 7 and its Friday, do something right today, go get Registered so you can vote in April! http://myloc.me/gOnBL

forakin @Sadeeqabdul I doubt God wants to be thanked for your choosing not to do your civic duty (#INECRegistration).

TruthHuntr Hmmm... RT @NigeriaNewsdesk NEXT — Government may extend voter registration period http://j.mp/gWwTMV #INECregistration #RSVP

dozenhost #INECRegistration Tip, Have your address written down on a sheet of paper too, that can quicken the registration process too.

purefoyCNN Not many people registering in Mushin today, but despite recent wahalla (Wazobia said 10 ten dead) not many problems with #INECregistration

Death derails war crime justice

The ill omen of custody deaths

Two deaths in six days find the Dutch in as much a difficult situation as stressed out foreigners trying to learn Dutch.

The wheels of justice fell off as the chief defendant in the case where a president is being tried for war crimes departs with finality before judgment could be pronounced.

It does represent serious problems with these war crime tribunals.

Poor case construction

The one in The Hague has been sitting for just about four years in which the original chief judge and Slobodan Milosevic have suffered serious health battles that they both now have lost.

The case against Milosevic constituted 66 counts or charges and hundreds of witnesses in a case of an overly elaborated justice process that has failed to conclude satisfactorily.

Conversely, the Iraqi tribunal is dealing with a event by event despatch of justice, but has the proviso of executing capital punishment within 30 days of sentencing.

It means that The Hague has taken time to exhaust all the issues of the war crimes allegedly committed by Milosevic and his cohorts whilst Iraq would only deal with one of so many crimes to which the sentencing on one can prevent justice being served for the other crimes.

These are both seriously flawed; there is a need for a well-packaged and precise prosecution activity and an exhaustive analysis of crimes where arguments can give weight to the importance of some over others to the satisfaction of all affected.

Time is an unaffordable luxury

Time also is not on the side of all the parties concerned, first the defendants have moved from a live of freedom and opulence to a deprived but functional existence – this would have a psychological, social, physiological and emotional effects on them – the change of circumstances would definitely impact on their health by reason of the environment or some innocuous psychosomatic influence.

In these circumstances, there is a thin line between defiance and despair; it is not clear who will draw that line, where it would be drawn and who might end up on either side.

Even if it is assumed that none of the defendants are suicide risks, the risk of a sudden and precipitous decline in health and well-being is possible that the 30-minute interval monitoring of the defendants is just about enough time to have a ligature round the neck or suffer a heart attack with death arriving swiftly.

It might be that the defendants need to wear biorhythm monitors or have to endure uninterrupted surveillance though that might impact on their civil liberties.

The fact is defendants can be sentenced in situ, in absentia but not posthumously.

A President’s internment

Mr Milosevic who might have been an example to other leaders, who rule with tyranny, has now become a victim of sorts; hero to some; villain to some.

However, nothing stops former Presidents from getting a state funeral, he ruled his people for a decade, albeit badly. However, only recently, Idi Amin and Milton Obote of Uganda who seriously messed up their countries had state recognition at their deaths.

It would not be out of place for Milosevic to be recognised as such; I would not be taking bets on the numbers that might turn out.

Barking Balkans

The paradox of the Balkans is that it is like yeast, you do not need too much for it to leaven the dough; so is their ability to create ructions not only in Europe but globally.

Conspiracies will overrun the truth

On the matter of death, he probably died naturally from a condition related to his heart; some might try to take that dignity away from him and suggest he committed suicide but the greater conspiracy that would create the best copy would be the tribunal refusing to let him receive treatment in Russia where his family is and allowing his condition to deteriorate as he was slowly being poisoned that he succumbed before judgment day.

Solve the crime and stop the idle talk

The spate of killings that pervaded the Netherlands underworld did not go unnoticed last week.

Whilst many may say, it was some sort of score settling between rival fiefdoms of ill repute, the killing happened in our streets and one in far off Thailand within days of each other.

The public in general might have been in grave danger with one of the killing happening quite near a school, thankfully, we were spared that greater horror.

Even so, we all have the right to be very concerned and probably even fearful that such lawlessness could be on our streets with the police just given to speculation rather than crime-solving.

That statement might be considered unfair, but not in the light of the absurd bureaucracy which classes general crimes along with crimes against the person.

One would contend that reporting a crime like a theft or burglary should be made in the appropriate police district, however, when one has suffered actual bodily harm that has resulted in visiting the nearest first aid/emergency clinic which happens to be outside the police district where the crime happened, the police station nearest to the clinic should be more obliging.

In this case, that police station is just opposite the door to the emergency clinic, and when they refused to take the report, the crime went unreported.

In the light of the killings, the deputy police chief has attributed the events to a criminal investigation which got some hoodlums scared to the point of liquidating those who might talk.

Then the police have offered a sop to other likely targets of safety if they would talk too – absurd does not begin to describe the logic behind this, my vested interest is in the fact that the police have always excelled in losing the respect of their public with such crass analysis.

There is a long caseload of unsolved gangland killings stretching over 15 years and this does not augur well for anybody. However, you are more likely to see the police nabbing fare defaulters on the Metro than actually seeing to real public safety.

Ones candid advice is to get down to the job of real crime solving, especially those intractable ones even if it involves getting a few smarter guys to run the investigations.

As for the police chief’s comments, I have heard quite a few excuses in my time but this one is just too lame to warrant any quality of stipend.

For now the sorry state of affairs lies with the hapless activity of speculation and inaction.

Reference

Investigation prompted underworld killings: top cop

Gangster John Mieremet killed in Thailand

A new spitting cell

Primary school nightmares

One can only reminisce with amusement those kinds of myths and rumours that pervade the mid-mornings of primary school breaks on events that purportedly happened after closing the day before.

Before the rumour another primary school memory surfaces with the event of having all my hair shorn after a visit to the barber's though one is not sure if that was a professional mistake on the part of the barber or a Machiavellian ploy by my father for his amusement.

I never lived that episode down, with all the name-calling at school the next day. Suffice it to say kids can be so unknowingly unkind.

However, getting to school one morning the air was filled with the rumour of a spitting cobra having been caught and killed in the alleyway that leads to the playing area.

Every sort of embellishment followed with the legend of spitting teeth, blindness, terrifying and nightmarish aggressive attacks that made on walking daintily for days in the playing area thinking a brood of cobras had arrived to paralyse our quest for fun.

Faced with a spitting cobra

You may wonder why this diversion into triviality, even I wonder at the consuming triviality that accompanies the purposeful and deliberate lack of vision and social determination of our politicians.

News reaches one that a social miscreant who alleged tried to spit in the face of the Dutch Immigration and Integration Minister still languishes in a police cell pending unknown action beyond the complaint lodged by the minister.

That the minister should draw such animosity is no surprise; though she did so deftly evade the attack; her seemingly obnoxious policies one of which involves having to gain fluency in Dutch and its customs before applying to reside in the Netherlands is covered in another of my blogs.

Once again, one does not condone the unwarranted personal attacks on persons, especially those of importance in governance and society.

To pretend that certain actions and policies can be promulgated without some reaction or reactionary seeking to express dissent in some unusual albeit despicable manner is to forget the nature of society, especially when one is the Integration minister.

The unfortunate event occurred on a family outing and so probably would have affected the members of the minister's family, but then it exposes them to the fact that the wife and mother can be held both in esteem and utter contempt - such is life.

Comfortable crime figures

Not wanting to contrast the inaction of the police to ones plight when three young men put their feet into me in many bodily places which eventually required hospital treatment.

One can only subsume that lodging a complaint with the suspect to hand is easier resolve to the police than reporting actual crimes against the person where the suspects have bolted.

However, one should think that person should have now been charged with an affray except if some innovative terrorist related  crime is about to be evoked, hence, the euphemism 'The motive of the "attack" remains unclear', that said entirely without prejudice. One has to explore if a spitting cell is operating the Netherlands; that represents enough terror to our leaders.

Nonsense and sensibilities

One has documented repeatedly the apparent pre-occupation of politicians with burnishing their image and seeking redress from the most playful name-calling or irreverence that government and leadership suffers.

Might it be that the lack of inspirational ideas to get involved in mean that there is just enough time to sue for being called a toddler, or risk a diplomatic fallout for the out-spoken commentary of a truthful foreign minister.

All this, in face of the fact that the Dutch are considered blunt, if not altogether brusque.

To want to sanitise oneself from the rough and tumble of politics in the cocoon of a bye-gone age of serf and unimpeachable master is fallacy to the extreme, but that fallacy is suddenly too present in the Dutch policy, none of which leaves us with much to be surprised about.

One wonders in the end if the freedom of expression through spitting is not being curtailed by this new crop of political untouchables that crowd the Netherlands political landscape.

If one lesson can be learnt of history; Julius Caesar, a model of political office did have the opportunity to say, "Et tu, Brute"

Reference

Spitting cobra - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Man held for spitting at Verdonk

Tolerance as a mindset of choice, prejudice and hypocrisy - Part 2

Poster Dogs Potter