OPEN LETTER TO INEC CHAIRMAN PROF. ATTAHIRU JEGA

As a well concerned citizen of this country, it is usually painful to see how things are done in the country. Living a stone age in the computer age is not a good show of development.

Sir, international election monitoring observers commended you on the success of the 2011 election you conducted labelling it as laudable, credible and first of its kind in Nigeria's history. This is another opportunity for you to receive such credit and prove to the world that the first wasn't a fluke. It's a very good idea that you have decided to conduct this election by PVC to minimise election fraud but it seems you lack the idea on how to bring it to fruition.

It is alarming to know that less than 3 weeks to election, a large number of the populace still haven't registered for the so called PVC yet the registration had closed. My observation is that the system or method by which you handled the process was not without flaw. It is not too late to improve on the process so as not to disenfranchise a lot of people.

Registering for the PVC involves capturing people's biodata but that shouldn't be a rocket science! You made it look like it's a technology imported from the future. Yet JAMB use this every year to register UTME candidates. Network providers use this system every blessed day to register new users. So, why the friction with INEC? You could have asked cyber cafes to come for screening and get them registered with INEC then people can just walk in to such cafes and get registered at their own convenient time. Almost all of them have camera and fingerprint reader. Since INEC maintains the same database, anybody who registers anywhere accross the federation is captured in your datababae so there would have been no need for the stress and horror nigerians went through, queueing in the sun amidst pushing and pulling in a bid to register.

Secondly, please publish on your website the list of names of PVC that are ready for collection by local governments everyday. Almost everyone can access the internet via their mobile these days. This way everyone can track if his/her PVC is ready for collection before heading to INEC's office. Also, the overall progress can also be tracked transparently this way.

These are my personal suggestions and I will be expecting an open reply.

Kb.