Abuja – The Independent National Electoral
Commission (INEC), says it has done
everything to protect its card readers from
being hacked or jammed on Election Day.
Mr Chidi Nwafor, the Director of Information
and Communication Technology (ICT), INEC,
stated this at a Situation Room Dialogue
with INEC officials in on Wednesday in Abuja.
The dialogue was organised by the Nigeria
Civil Society Situation Room, with support
from the British Department for
International Development (DFID).
Nwafor said the meeting became necessary,
following insinuations by some people that
there were plans to jam or hack its server or
card readers.
“I want to assure you that we have done
everything possible in terms of security
issues; in terms of when it was being
designed, we have considered a lot of
things.
“In any technology, we bring out issues as
an engineer, but you must also know that
this equipment you are bringing is for
electoral process.
“Therefore, for you to make a design, you
must also look at full electoral process of
voting.
“Where are the ways this thing can be
hacked? Where are the ways this equipment
can be used in a negative ways? All these we
have considered.
Nwafor added that the commission’s
Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) and card
readers would help to eliminate election
frauds in the forthcoming general elections.
He identified some of the election fraud in
the country to include buying of votes, voter
impersonation, ballot stuffing, mis-recording
of vote and multiple voting.
“Multiple voting should be a thing of the
past and the card reader would ensure one
man: one vote,’’ he said.
He, however, added that curbing election
fraud was not just the duty of INEC but all
stakeholders.
Also speaking, INEC Chairman, Prof. Attahiru
Jega, expressed the commission’s
confidence in its card readers, adding that it
had procured adequate functional card
readers needed for the conduct of the
elections.
Jega said that the commission had taken
adequate measures to ensure that the card
readers do not fail, stating that in the mock
test conducted, no card reader failed.
“We have about 150,000 voting points,
because we broke some of the large polling
units into voting points.
“We have procured 182,000 card readers, of
all of these, we have only about 400 that
were `dead on arrival’ – factory faults.
“They have been brought and they cannot
boot, so we are comfortable about the
integrity of the card readers itself and all the
public demonstrations and test we have
done, no card reader has failed.
“In addition we already have extra battery in
case there is a problem with the charge of
batteries or lack of functionality of the
battery.“
Jega added that because the country would
be holding three elections in one day, it had
to adopt measures to ensure that the ballot
papers were properly placed in correct
ballot boxes.
“Because we are doing three elections on
March 28 and then two set on April 11, we
are using three ballot boxes and three and
two ballot boxes for March 28 and April 11
respectively.
“We have done colour coding just to make it
easier to avoid mistake in placing the ballot
papers in the appropriate ballot boxes,’’ he
added.
He said the commission had agreed to open
each of the ballot boxes and sort out
wrongly placed ballot papers after election
in the presence of all agents and observers
before counting.
According to him, the commission would
continue with its sensitisation programme
on the need for people to place their cast
votes in the appropriate boxes. (NAN)

This is a very welcome development....

Let's have a relatively fair elections this year.

Nigerians deserve to ELECT their leaders and not their leaders selecting themselves.

Yawa don gas for Jona

I hope APC would not have to complain after they have lost as usual.

Anoda bad news for d tanoids