By Jude Opara

Certainly the much anticipated March 28 presidential
and National Assembly elections may have come and
gone but the echoes from that exercise is one that
will surely linger for a very long time to come.

The election also came with mixed reactions not
necessarily about the result or who won or lost but
concerning the conduct of the exercise by the
Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)
and the activities of other stakeholders involved in
the electoral process including the security agencies.

From all indications, there is this urgent need for the
electoral body to take a critical look at its operations
especially given the way the much celebrated smart
card reader performed on the election day; a
development that forced INEC to make a belated
adjustment to the electoral guidelines by calling for
the accreditation of voters manually.

*Making card readers functional*

In fact, the card reader was a huge embarrassment
to INEC in most places as it failed to read the
Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) of many people
including that of President Goodluck Jonathan and
his wife Patience.

In his polling unit in Otuoke, President Jonathan was
visibly embarrassed and livid when after four card
readers were brought, none of them could capture
his finger prints, which resulted in the issuance of the
incident form to him and his wife.

May be because it happened to the number one
citizen of the country, would INEC have been patient
enough to bring another card reader when the first
one failed to read the bio date of the voter if he was
just an ordinary citizen?

Another lapse that INEC must quickly address before
the April 11 governorship and state assembly
elections is the issue of logistics. It is worrisome that
in most places it took the commission over five to
seven hours to send materials and personnel to the
polling units even as hundreds of voters were on
ground waiting.

Early arrival of electoral officers, materials
In Abuja, for instance, it was a near total failure as
materials and the ad-hoc staff arrived very late and
this forced elections to extend into the night in most
of the polling units. INEC has blamed the National
Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) for the
delay but Nigerians will like to see an improvement in
the subsequent elections.

*Retraining of electoral officers*

INEC must also do more in the training and
retraining of the staff whether ad-hoc or not. There
were some embarrassing reports that in some places
the electoral officials did not know how to operate
the card reader machines while there was another
sorry story of officials forgetting to bring the card
reader. It is like a farmer forgetting his hoe and
cutlass while heading to the farm. Everybody also
saw how the electoral officer who attended to
President Jonathan was very uneasy as if he was not
given any prior training of how to handle the device.
Security operatives: One other area that needs
attention is the proper enlightenment of the security
operatives on how to function on Election Day.

Though, most of them performed very creditably, but
a few others were unnecessarily overzealous.
I encounter this soldier who stopped me on my way
to INEC office around 9am, and he said I was wrong
to be on the road after 8am. Even as I wore my INEC
approved accreditation jacket for the media with an
approved car pass, the soldier said he was told not to
allow anybody on the road after 8am.
All my explanations that I was a journalist and not an
INEC staff did not impress him until after he was
begged by other people he stopped including those
who were going to where they registered before he
allowed us to continue with our journey.

Now haven talked much about the issues we
experienced with the card reader, most Nigerians
who spoke on the Election Day still believed that
despite all the imperfections, the device was better
than when it was not introduced. The argument is
that it has the tendency to reduce to its barest
minimum the incidents of rigging in elections.
INEC who felt embarrassed even after apologizing to
the President for his experience at the polling unit
has promised to investigate what actually happened.

*Possible sabotage*

The commission fell short of talking about a possible
sabotage but the body language of the national
commissioners who briefed the media during the
election said it all.

Another puzzle is why the widespread failure of the
device which during the demonstration in 12 states
only had issues with the capturing of finger prints of
some people and not the widespread failure to read
the PVCs.

Provision of materials: The issue of River State is also
one that INEC must make a categorical statement on
because the accusation of a likely deliberate plot to
favour some candidates against some others is not a
good one. Reports that INEC did not provide the
result sheets in many places should be addressed.

In a television interview on Saturday, INEC Chairman,
Prof. Attahiru Jega, in spite the imperfections said he
was hopeful of an election that will be better than the
2011 edition that was said to have been widely free,
fair and credible. He argued that the areas that were
badly affected by the failure of the card reader which
forced the postponement were 305 polling units out
of the nearly 120,000.

Apart from addressing these challenges Nigerians
want a system that will guarantee their safety and
this reflected in the large turnout of voters despite
the palpable fear about the outbreak of crisis.

http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/03/presidentialnass-polls-lessons-for-gov-state-assembly-elections/

I tell you
it should be a lesson to inec ,politicians,securities,press even electorates if only they will learn
and am still very sure the pressure will be much by then

The guy above me is quitely speaking in a good mood

Nice article. But you should try and paragraph/space your headings!

Nice one. Bt INEC is really trying