This Shettima doesn't even know what he is saying..
No matter how good a user of a faulty system is, the results from such a faulty system will always be BAD.
But if a system is so good that it can almost always function autonomously and automatically by itself -- save for some very minor human inputs,, then there is no need for high human expertise to be engaged before achieving great results with such a system..
The system always knows by itself what to do at any point in time,, without the need for any form of expert supervision..
There are tested-and-trusted governance systems which had brought about good governance in the past for many nations,, and any time they were put in place, good governance had been attained.
But here, we have a Shettima who is trying to GASLIGHT us into believing so much in flawed excess human inputs,, which the Nigerian Humans had shown time-after-time that they cannot be trusted with carrying out impeccable processes and arriving at clean outputs..
So,, why is Shettima preaching.?? Why not just bring in a system that doesn't need to appeal to the people's morals? Why not just bring in a system that is purely output-based,, no matter the types of humans that are handling such systems??
THE NIGERIAN SYSTEM ITSELF,, AND THE SUB-SYSTEMS THAT ARE OPERATING WITHIN NIGERIA ALL NEED TO BE TOTALLY OVERHAULED... WE NEED WORKING SYSTEMS IN NIGERIA.!!
In the end,, we don't good governance SYSTEMS.. And we don't even have GOOD GOVERNANCE ITSELF..
And we don't even have good leaders.. We don't even have the proper systems for getting ourselves good leaders, to even start with..
The things that will bring good governance,, they won't do it.
LOVEALAIGBO: IPOB are really naive if not stupid not to have foreseen this! I have warned countless number of times that any sit-at-home should be suspended until further notice! Reason being that those (non-Igbo) intent on hijacking the non-confrontational form of protest to cause mayhem and bloodshed are still not relenting in their malevolence! They have no scrupples in shedding blood to achieve their evil objective....more so when said blood is that of '2nd class Igbo slaves'! They want to teach Ndigbo in general and IPOB/Kanu in particular a lesson for daring to want to secede!
I was certain something like this would happen during the ill-advised sit-at-home, and i'm not surprised they chose Abia state to carry out their murderous plan! There's a noticeable trend: notice how anytime a south-east state is showing promise and making positive political and economic news, that's the state they will focus their murderous attention on! They have now left Anambra (all the senseless and inexplicable high-profile assasinations and murders they carried out in the state).....and with the coming of LPs Dr Alex Otti in Abia and all the positive developmental news coming from the state (improved power supply, infrastructural development, good governance, happy citizenry, etc), they have now focused on Abia state to try and create a hightened spate of insecurity and disrupt the good governance and the happiness of the citizens there! By murdering the soldiers, these evil vampires are hoping the army stupidly go in with all guns blazing and cause a downturn in the economy and positive investment climate Dr Otti has brought about in the state. They do this out of envy and the wickedness in their hearts and they have their agents planted on social media whose job it is to fill the entire media space with the falsehood that 'IPOB are going about murdering soldiers to enforce sit-at-home'! You can see how they've been at it on nairaland since yesterday! Suddenly, known Igbo-haters are now weeping more than the bereaved as they make countless posts and open thread after thread on 'how IPOB are destroying the south-east by murdering soldiers'!
They said that they too were indoors.
Why did you write this long epistle? Who is it directed to?
The so-called IPOB members who have just said that they too were indoors? Or the criminals who decided to come out and cause trouble?
Gistmedia10: Fomer Nigeria senator, Dino Melaye found himself in awe as he visited a friend's residence only to discover a pair of cheetahs prowling in the house. Dino known for his outspoken nature and vibrant personality, the Senator's reaction was nothing short of amazed as he witnessed the majestic creatures up close.
The encounter occurred during a social visit to his friend's estate, where Senator Melaye was invited for an informal gathering. Little did he expect to encounter such exotic pets, especially in the form of two cheetahs, notorious for their speed and grace in the wild.
Out of excitement, Senator Melaye exclaimed, "I have never come this close to cheetahs..." To which his friend humorously replied, "But you are from Africa." Senator Melaye, with a chuckle, added, "I only see them from afar in a zoo." His friend then remarked, "I got them all from Africa." To this, the astonished senator simply responded, "Wow!"
To this man,, the whole of Africa is filled with wild animals. Everywhere in Africa are all part of the “Mighty African Zoo”..
The boot-licker Melaye didn't even see the shading. He was just trying to be a good visitor/guest.. Whereas the host is being a very rude/nasty host to him.
MrBrownJay1: contact the person who sold you the goods and tell them that if you dont get your goods then he/she must pay you back for everything (goodsand waybill)...as they gave you this man's number, they are responsible for them. tell them to either bring the goods back to lagos WITH your 30K or you will report them to the police for fraud. what type of yeye scam are they playing?!
Now that the goods are closer to me, and then, the main driver who brought the goods had already gone back..
It is either the goods were released, or they remain in the store where the driver left it.
ajidikun: Have you called the person that connected you to the driver? I feel he must have known and trusted the driver for him to connect you to him. This is bad for his business oooo.
I called the person that contacted me with the fake driver, and he said that he took some SOLDIERS and went over to the fake-driver’s house and arrested him, and that they also seized his car-keys and his phones..
**(But I guess those things he said were lies.. Because that was the same evening which I called the fake driver, and he picked-up and later started swearing with the name of God)**
AVECDEO: If your own brother that you speak the same language and culture could be this mean to you I wonder what they will do to people from other tribes.
Is the goods contraband...why will it cost 30k to waybill a goods of 80k within Nigeria and customs involvement...please make it make sense.
Wealthoptulent: Chai! Government/politicians no be our problem, na we we. Politicians are jus the reflection of we people, down mainstream.. dem jus dey rep our portray, this kind man go siddon read newspaper or listen news n go follo dey Curse Government! Or shouting ELLUU PEE, say one na SAINT OBI & OTHER Escobar abi? E pain me say this kind people no dey buy better phone wey get internet or dey on Whatsapp make we greet am for u. I will save the number n when next subscribe fr international call I go greet am too
Dexy4yah: Some of this drivers are heartless...when it comes to waybill issues
He will pay the money when you give him deadline and threaten him with Alusi.
Cus is very obvious he doesn't want to pay the money...
Dexy4yah: Have been calling him but the idiot is not picking.
Blake755: I called him he just dey form he doesn't know me
MrBrownJay1: contact the person who sold you the goods and tell them that if you dont get your goods then he/she must pay you back for everything (goodsand waybill)...as they gave you this man's number, they are responsible for them. tell them to either bring the goods back to lagos WITH your 30K or you will report them to the police for fraud. what type of yeye scam are they playing?!
Angrygoat: Y u no use peace mass transit. Highest 5k
ajidikun: Have you called the person that connected you to the driver? I feel he must have known and trusted the driver for him to connect you to him. This is bad for his business oooo.
**UPDATE
I later called the man on the 6th of June.. (Exactly One Month after I made the payment).. And I told him to pay-up to those people, so that I can carry my load and settle my life..
He started accusing me that I went to report him to “My Prople”, and that they were calling him left-and-right, even at night, and that he couldn't sleep well again, just because of my little load which is not even big for anything...
He then started swearing with the name of God, and started telling me that he had paid everything that was to be paid to the transportation company, and that God will judge both me and him, if what I did to him was good.. That I didn't wait for him to settle the issue amicably before I rushed to go and report him..
I was so surprised that he was even saying such a thing.
I reminded him the exact name of the transportation company, and also told him that it was written on the Manifest that the waybill-charges for my load was not paid for, and that I must pay another N30k before I carry my goods.
He started pleading that there must have been a mix-up somewhere, and that he is going to go back to the park and rectify things with them.
I continued calling him every single day to know how far he had resolve the issues with the transportation company,
And up till this moment.,, he is still telling me that he is arguing issues with them....
He even pleaded that I should help him pay N10k, so that he can pay the remaining N20k... AND I AGREED TO PAY OOOO...!!![/i]
YET UP TILL THIS VERY MOMENT, HE HAD NOT PAID ANYTHING..
I have not carried my goods yet. This man is really causing too much trouble to my life..
Wealthoptulent: Chai! Government/politicians no be our problem, na we we. Politicians are jus the reflection of we people, down mainstream.. dem jus dey rep our portray, this kind man go siddon read newspaper or listen news n go follo dey Curse Government! Or shouting ELLUU PEE, say one na SAINT OBI & OTHER Escobar abi? E pain me say this kind people no dey buy better phone wey get internet or dey on Whatsapp make we greet am for u. I will save the number n when next subscribe fr international call I go greet am too
AVECDEO: If your own brother that you speak the same language and culture could be this mean to you I wonder what they will do to people from other tribes.
Is the goods contraband...why will it cost 30k to waybill a goods of 80k within Nigeria and customs involvement...please make it make sense.
I don't really know if bales of clothes are contraband in Nigeria..
But I had been receiving lots of bales from Lagos in the past.
Why is this very one causing me lots of trouble??
Please Please.. Just help me and reach to him. Someone's market is hanging for a month right now.. Tomorrow it will be exactly ONE MONTH I paid for this.. Thanks Goodness it is not a perishable good.
Dexy4yah: He later picked and told me that the money will be paid tomorrow. Try to reach him and verify
This very man in question is a big liar. He had told me lots of lies already.. I cannot believe anything he says any longer..
Please, which time tomorrow did he say he would make the payment.?? And how would anybody believe that whatever he is said is true.??
Meanwhile.. Thanks so much for helping me out. At least, he should know that I have people who are ready to help me and locate him if it becomes necessary..
..
From the look of things, he himself might not even be a driver,, but a middle-man who takes goods to drivers for delivery (without paying these drivers).
The name of the logistics he used was: SUCCESS THRONE TRANSPORT AND LOGISTICS.. (Thanni Olodo Street, by Young Shall Grow Motors, Jibowu Underbridge, Yaba Lagos)
I never intended naming this Logistics here... But the man probably works there, or goes there often..
He is really bringing a very bad name to SUCCESS THRONE TRANSPORT AND LOGISTICS..
Blake755: I called him he just dey form he doesn't know me
He is a logistics person. But he usually scam people with it. I feel so used and cheated right now.
I even got to know that he had been doing this same thing to a lot of customers.. And these innocent people ended up paying the drivers on delivery, so that their goods won't be returned back..
A certain logistics driver somewhere in Lagos is badly dulling my vibes. And I am deeply heartbroken right now as I am typing this.
I would really love you guys to call him on phone and disturb him with your “Greetings” on my behalf, and tell him to settle my life abbegg, so that I can carry my small goods where his laziness and dubious character had kept it, so that I can go my way peacefully.
His name is Ukanwoke Enyinnaya. And this is his phone number: 0-8-0-3 - 7-6-3 - 3-6-3-6.
He duped me of Thirty Thousand Naira (N30k) just to transport a small load which I bought for N80k
Now he is trying to make pay another N30k
I am now suffering for the criminality of another person.
Here below is the whole long story of how everything happened..
I bought goods that are worth N80k from a customer in Lagos on 4th-May (Thursday), and she linked me up with a driver that was supposed to bring the goods down to Awka (in Anambra State), with a Waybill charge of N30k; which I paid directly into the would-be driver's account.
After 2-weeks of unnecessary delay, I got a call from a totally different number belonging to a driver who was transporting the goods to Awka, and he was requesting that I should pay him N30k before I can carry my goods.
At first, I thought it was the supposed driver to whom I paid the N30k to.
So, I tried explaining to the driver that the waybill-charge of the goods had already been paid for, but he insisted that I must pay another N30k because no money was given to him when he took off from Lagos., that he picked up the goods on the basis of pay-on-delivery.
I tried finding out what he did with the N30k I already paid for the waybill of the goods, but he said that he didn't know what I was talking about. That was when it dawned on me that I was communicating with a totally different driver.
When the new driver finally arrived Awka on Sunday, (21st-May), I went to meet him, and he still maintained that I am owing N30k, and he showed me a manifest to prove himself.
There-and-then, I contacted the other supposed driver to whom I paid N30k to explain things to him, then he pleaded with the new driver to release my goods to me, but he blatantly refused, and threatened to carry the goods back to Lagos.
The supposed driver pleaded that he would resolve the matter at the park manager’s office the next day (Monday 22nd-May), and that I must get my goods on Monday. But then the driver who carried the goods still insisted that he would return my goods to Lagos if I did not pay the additional N30k.
He then decided to go and drop the goods with a Logistics Company in Awka, who paid him the N30k and collected the goods from him and dismissed him. Now, my goods are inside the Logistics Company in Awka, and they are requesting that I refund them the N30k they paid to the driver before I can collect my goods from them.
After I finished explaining to them that the waybill-charges had already been fully paid, they now contacted the supposed driver to whom I earlier paid the N30k to, for him to refund the N30k to them so they can release my goods to me.
He had even collected the account number of the Logistics Company several times, yet he had refused to make any payment to them.
He later called and pleaded with me, that I should assist in making part-payment of N10k so that he can complete the rest of the money; because Customs seized the goods along the way and they had to pay for some charges. I accepted the reasons he gave and agreed to pay the N10k. But to my greatest surprise, he still refused to comply for almost ONE WEEK now..
I even threatened him with “Alụsi” (shrine), but he begged me to give him three days that he would rectify everything within three days.
The three days elapsed today, and I have not heard anything from him up till this very moment.
I don't know how else to make this driver to release this money so I can carry my goods.
He was definitely expecting me to pay another N30k just like that, so that it would be that I paid a total of N60k as waybill charges for goods of N80k.
It's really heartbreaking.
**UPDATE
I later called the man on the 6th of June.. (Exactly One Month after I made the payment).. And I told him to pay-up to those people, so that I can carry my load and settle my life..
He started accusing me that I went to report him to “My Prople”, and that they were calling him left-and-right, even at night, and that he couldn't sleep well again, just because of my little load which is not even big for anything...
He then started swearing with the name of God, and started telling me that he had paid everything that was to be paid to the transportation company, and that God will judge both me and him, if what I did to him was good.. That I didn't wait for him to settle the issue amicably before I rushed to go and report him..
I was so surprised that he was even saying such a thing.
I reminded him the exact name of the transportation company, and also told him that it was written on the Manifest that the waybill-charges for my load was not paid for, and that I must pay another N30k before I carry my goods.
He started pleading that there must have been a mix-up somewhere, and that he is going to go back to the park and rectify things with them.
I continued calling him every single day to know how far he had resolve the issues with the transportation company,
And up till this moment.,, he is still telling me that he is arguing issues with them....
He even pleaded that I should help him pay N10k, so that he can pay the remaining N20k... AND I AGREED TO PAY OOOO...!!![/i]
YET UP TILL THIS VERY MOMENT, HE HAD NOT PAID ANYTHING..
I have not carried my goods yet. This man is really causing too much trouble to my life..
In a recent Blog Post by Mark Essien (an ICT Expert), he explained (in details) the whole experiences he had while he was doing the IREV Collation.
One of the things he wrote in the article suggested that Peter Obi’s team of lawyers made good use of his collated results..
THE DRAMA IN TRYING TO CONVERT ELECTION PDFs TO SPREADSHEETS
My phone pinged: “Tell Mark Essien they are coming for him.”
I had no idea what that even meant. It was a forwarded WhatsApp message that someone had sent to a friend of mine.
All I was doing was trying to convert PDFs from the 2023 Nigeria Presidential elections into spreadsheets.
But let’s rewind a bit and give some context.
In 2020 a small group of about 5 young people went to a crossroads in Lagos, Nigeria to protest against police brutality. Their protest was called #EndSARS, and they were protesting police brutality. SARS (The Special Anti-Robbery Squad) was a notorious segment of the Nigeria police force, known for extortion and extra-judicial killings of anybody they termed armed robbers.
For 4 days that tiny group protested, with barely anybody noticing.
--
On the last day, as they were about to leave, someone tweeted about their protest. Then someone else retweeted, and someone else. And soon, there thousands of retweets, with social media hailing them as heroes.
A few people who saw the protest on twitter joined them. It was still a small crowd, but it was growing. The news started spreading on social media, and the crowd grew. Within a couple of days, there were thousands of people protesting with the #EndSARS hashtag. The government was silent, believing it would blow away shortly.
But the protests grew and grew. Young people in other cities started joining. Nigerian social media was aflame - this was the only topic. Till the protests became violent. The protesters started attacking police stations. The policemen started shooting protesters.
--
The protesters marched to notorious SARS prisons and forced them open. Prisoners escaped. Malls were burnt down. Policemen threw off their uniforms and Government officials fled.
As the violence flared, social media now started calling for calm. But it was late - a lot of hoodlums had already infiltrated the protests, and they were bent on getting revenge for everything they blamed the Government for.
The Government tried to stop the protests, but there was nobody to talk to. There was no head of protest, no figurehead, nobody with any real authority. They called it a “headless mob”.
Social media started calling for calm, and asking the president to speak. After many days of silence, he finally spoke, urging for calm, disbanding SARS and promising to address the concerns of the protesters.
--
Things calmed down. But there was still a huge crowd gathered at the Lekki Tollgate - a major, 6 lane highway that passes through the heart of Lagos. Concerts were playing at the location, people were serving food and drinks.
--
Then ominously, on the 20th of October of 2020 some people drove there in unmarked cars and removed all the Cameras installed at the tollgate.
--
That night, as the DJs played, all the floodlights at the tollgate switched off. Social media users warned about military vehicles driving along the highway towards the location.
--
Short clips from mobile phones capture what happened next. It’s dark, people are running, gunshots everywhere. People are gathered around bleeding people, screaming. More running, lights flashing.
There are no cameras, so there is no clear reconstruction.
--
But the next morning, the army is in control of the tollgate, and the protesters are gone. Social media is filled with messages that many people were killed and the army took away their bodies and cleared the scene. The army and government said nothing like that happened.
An uneasy calm starts.
There is a lot of anger, but the protests are over. Everything seems to be back to normal. But there is an under-current of youth anger.
And the presidential election is in 2023.
Nigeria has always been a two party state - much like the U.S. It uses pretty much the same presidential system as the U.S, and just like the Democrats and Republicans, there have been variants of the same two parties facing each other. Since 2011, it has been the PDP (former ruling party) against the APC (current ruling party).
In 2022, one of the candidates abruptly left the PDP, claiming that the process was rigged against him winning the nomination. He joined a small party that had only ever won one state governorship election in its entire history.
--
Suddenly, the social media mob adopted this candidate - Peter Obi - as their preferred candidate. Many of the same handles who had called out #EndSARS now became #Obidient. Tweets, WhatsApp messages grew, calling on others to join the #Obidient movement.
Peter Obi himself seemed as surprised as everyone else that the headless mob had adopted him, but he quickly accepted the Obidients, and started using the slogans as part of his campaign.
The political establishment mocked the movement, saying the “four people tweeting in a room” had never won even a council election in Nigeria.
The movement grew louder and louder on social media, with the members of the movement letting out their anger at the existing political institution. The politicians mocked back - saying that politics was not won on social media, but at the grassroots - referring to the villagers who normally vote for whoever gives them the most money.
Election Day came. The Labour Party candidate was Peter Obi, the candidate adopted by the young people on social media. The candidate from the ruling party was Bola Tinubu, former Governor of the most populous state (Lagos), and who has been involved in selecting every Governor to the state since he was Governor. He was also rumored to be getting a cut of all Lagos State tax revenue via a consulting firm he set up when he was Governor. The candidate from the former ruling party was Atiku Abubakar, a former vice president, a very wealthy man. His wealth came from his holdings in the ports, which he helped privatize when he was vice president.
--
For the first time, Nigeria had adopted electronic transmission of voting from the polling units. That meant that the polling unit voting sheets could be viewed in real time on a website.
As the results started coming in, the country was electrified. Tens of thousands of votes were coming in for Peter Obi. Then hundreds of thousands of votes started coming in. Then a million votes came in and another million.
The senatorial election results started coming in, and the Labour Party was winning seats. An unknown party with no previous Governor or Senate seat was sweeping seats across wide swathes of the country.
But there was no way of knowing who won. Even though the Nigerian Electoral Body had agreed to electronic transmission of polling unit results, the senators and political establishment had blocked the electronic transfer of actual votes. They wanted it still written on paper, for reasons we can guess at.
With 170,000 thousand polling units, it was going to take a long time to count the results.
But across social media, videos and photos were spreading of the Labour Party winning polling unit after polling unit, people yelling in happiness as the party won. Even in the rural areas, where the politicians had claimed they had absolute control, the party was winning unit after unit.
But other disturbing videos were also coming out - of polling units destroyed, and people threatening to hurt anyone who voted for the Labour party.
--
Social Media waited for the election commission to announce the results. People tried to tally the results online, but with 170,000 PDFs in a completely unstructured format,it was close to impossible.
Then INEC started announcing the state results, over a multiple day counting marathon. At the end, the result was announced:
The Obidients Labour Party: 6.1 million votes The former ruling PDP Party: 6.9 million votes The ruling party: 8.7million votes The Obidients had won in the capital city and had defeated the ruling party and their candidate in Lagos - the state they had ruled for the last 16 years. But according to the official tally, they had lost in the country.
But even as the results were being announced, people on social media were discovering that if they manually added all the results from the servers of the electoral umpire together, the total did not add up to the votes announced. They showed examples from Rivers State, where just a few polling units added together exceeded the votes announced by the electoral umpire. People cried foul.
--
The amended electoral rules required the parties to challenge election results within 21 days after they were announced. But to file, evidence was needed. The only evidence about how the election really went was spread out across 170,000 photographs of polling unit results.
There was no digital version of the results, just photos.
The clock was ticking, and immediately various Obidient groups sprung up to figure out how to extract the data out of the photos.
I was in one of the groups, and we decided to try various things.
The first thing was OCR. The photos were all snapped in many different ways, with hardly any structure. Each party result had a number beside it. The photo angles were different. Many sheets were blurry or had camera flash on them.
--
All the open source OCR software gave bad results. The best result came from Amazon Rekognition, but it was still not good enough - it would occasionally change the scores, and that was simply not going to work.
After experimenting with OCR for about a day, we gave up. WE HAD ABOUT 8 DAYS LEFT TO GO.
We had a brainstorming meeting, and decided to try a new approach. We would simply ask the Obidients to help us do the conversion. If hundreds of Obidients did the transcription, it would go fast.
So we quickly designed out a website. And then started coding. The frontend was in React, and the backend in PHP Laravel.
A couple of days later, the app was done. A simple site that showed a picture of a polling unit sheet and asked people to enter the votes they saw in some textfields. Then the values would be saved in the database.
I tweeted out the link.
Within minutes, I was getting replies from the Obidients. People were jumping on the site, and the first results started going up.
The progress bar started moving, slowly at first, and then faster and faster. We went from transcribing one result every minute to transcribing 1 every 10 seconds, and soon we were transcribing at 1 sheet per second.
Traffic grew on the site, and soon our completely unoptimized backend was struggling to catch up. But we were moving forward. We quickly grew to be transcribing 20,000 sheets per day.
The site had a results page that was updating the results live as the sheets were transcribing. The results were growing, and by the time we had counted 6 million votes, the Obidients were clearly in the lead. We kept transcribing, and by the time we had reached 50% of the count - 10 million votes - Peter Obi was strongly in the lead.
I tweeted that out, and all hell broke loose.
Suddenly, out of nowhere thousands of spam twitter accounts came out of nowhere, attacking the effort. Threats, attacks of all kinds hit us.
Then the bots came. Thousands of entries started on the site - all entering huge numbers for the ruling party. Different IP addresses, different proxies, all entering fake numbers.
When we started the project, we had a plan. We would first transcribe all 170,000 polling unit results, then we would do a second pass of all the results again as a validation step. If the same numbers were entered twice, then it was likely that the entered numbers were correct. But with the bots entering fake numbers, we now had a new battle to fight.
We immediately enabled captcha, and that slowed down the bots a bit. Then we quickly implemented a check to see if anybody would enter weirdly large numbers, we would ignore their entries moving forward. Then we started showing some results we knew to the bots - if they entered wrong numbers, we would stop accepting the results.
Whoever was behind the bots kept adapting and counteracting what we were doing. They went from using a script to using what felt like hundreds of humans. They went from entering absurdly large numbers to entering plausible numbers. They started entering some correct and some wrong numbers.
But the combination of techniques and the large number of Obidients also working meant that we were also getting a huge number of correct entries.
It seemed the counter-parties realized that they would not win on technology, so they started a new campaign. Hundreds of accounts that claimed to be Obidients suddenly popped up, saying that we were working for the ruling party, and that the work we were doing was designed to prove that the Obidients had lost the election. Every single post I made would have tens of those accounts replying.
And they doubled down - they created a fake screenshot showing that the ruling party had won on our site, and started spreading that. A current Government minister even tweeted this out, and a badly written article hurriedly appeared on a major local newspaper.
Their technique worked. The Obidients started doubting. Prominent Obidient accounts started threads questioning if we were working for the Government.
Meanwhile, we had completed transcribing 150,000 polling unit sheets, and we needed to move to the validation phase where we would correct all the damage the bots had done.
But the damage had been done. The crowd we had pulled to do the work did not trust us anymore. We did not have anyone anymore to help us validate the entries. Work started, but moved very slowly - less than 2000 entries validated in a day. It would take us 3 months to finish at this rate.
Was our project going to fail? If we did not announce results, the Obidients would be sure that we were working for the Government. And the Government already saw us as enemies. How could we solve this?
I started looking through the data. We had 800,000 submissions in our database for 170,000 polling units. I was randomly sampling, and I noticed that a huge number of entries were correct. And strangely enough, the ones with the wrong entries had lots and lots of wrong entries. While the vast majority, which only had one entry, were mostly correct.
I tested around a bit, and then I realized. WE HAD A BUG IN THE CODE. When you opened the website for the first time, it was buggy - it was not returning a totally random entry the way it was supposed to. It had a huge tendency to return from a small set of entries. But subsequent ones were now random.
That meant that every time the website was fully refreshed, the first polling unit entered was one that probably already had hundreds of entries. But if you kept working, you would now be working on new units.
And I realized what could have happened - whoever was controlling the bots must have told them to refresh after every entry. Probably they figured out that it would make it harder for us to detect. But then they ended up entering all the wrong values mostly for a small set of units that we could easily clean up.
Up to 90% of our data was perfectly clean.
We quickly stopped all entries, and start crunching the results. A few hours of heavy server lifting, and we were done.
We had transcribed 170,000 polling unit sheets to CSV format in 5 days WITH A LARGE GROUP OF VOLUNTEERS.
We shared the results with “THE TEAM” for them to submit as part of their evidence. And we were done.
Politics › Re: Tinubu's Silence And Unreported Achievements - Tunde Rahman by BluntNigerian: 5:33am On Jun 02, 2024
