Nigeria Not Mature To Send Election Results Electronically – Okoye, INEC

* Reveals real reasons 2019 general election was postponed

The Independent National Electoral
Commission’s National Commissioner and Chairman of the Information
and Voter Education Committee, Mr Festus Okoye, a lawyer, has given
an insight into some of the nagging and persistently worrying
questions about the just concluded general
elections. 

He revealed this at the fortuitous event of the Catholic Men
Organisation, CMO, Week and Fathers’ Day celebration of the St.
Joseph’s Catholic Cathedral branch in Kaduna, where the electoral
body’s spokesman was the guest speaker.

Okoye, frank to a fault, gave the real reasons the 2019 general
election was postponed with graphic details of what forced the
Commission to assign new timelines for the polls. Hear him:

“When I was called upon to come and speak, my greatest challenge
was the topic to speak on. I rejected the topic I was given because
having practiced law for over 33 years when I got to the
Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, I was reminded
that I can only now speak on issues around elections because if I
stray to other areas whatever I say may be misinterpreted. So, I
decided that it was important, that it was fundamental and also
crucial for me to come before you and speak a little about some of
the issues around elections, some of the challenges that attended
the 2019 general elections and also the way forward. So, I titled
my presentation the “Dynamics and Mechanisms of Free and Fair
Elections”. So, I have given what I call the 10 irreducible
minimums for the conduct of free, fair and transparent elections. I
have also set out the 10 challenges the Commission had in
conducting the 2019 general elections. I have also given 10 ways by
which we can have free, fair and transparent elections in Nigeria.
And that is exactly what I intend to do.

Catholic Men Organisation should get us prepared for the
rainy day 

I know that today is not exactly a day for grammar, that today
is a day when members of the Catholic Men Organisation, CMO, of the
St. Joseph’s Catholic Cathedral, here in Kaduna, are supposed to
raise funds to take care of our members who are suffering from one
illness or the other because only a healthy person can practice his
or her religion well. If you are not healthy there is the
possibility that when you want to come to Church you may not be in
a good shape to come and then we will have to invite the Reverend
Father to go and see you at home. There is possibility that when
you are healthy you will be in a position to run around and make
money in order to send your children to school and fend for your
family. You certainly will not be able to achieve that if you are
not healthy and the organization you belong to has to intervene at
one time or the other in order to assist you. That is why this
Medical Endowment that has been initiated is very fundamental.

2019 general elections: our challenges and the irreducible
minimums

Now, I want to say humbly and with all sense of humility that as
a Commission we conducted a very good election this year. I also
want to say that as a Commission there were significant challenges
with the elections we conducted. And I want to put them in
perspective so that when we debate, when we analyse, when we go out
to talk about the issues of elections we will be in a position to
understand some of the things that happened during that particular
period that created bottlenecks, challenges or situations where
some of us completely disengaged from the electoral process on
account of our disappointment. Part of the irreducible minimums I
have talked about for the conduct of free, fair and transparent
elections is that first you must have a clear, concise, unambiguous
and credible electoral and constitutional framework. There is no
way you can conduct an election without a credible electoral and
constitutional framework being in place at least six months before
any major election so that whoever wants to go and contest election
knows that a person above the age of 30 is eligible to contest so
that you don’t have a situation where two months to election you
have started campaigning and then you wake up and hear that the
constitution has been amended; that before you can contest election
you have to be 50 years old. You must also have a credible voters’
register so that if your name is not in the voters register there
is no way you can vote. If you have an electoral body made up of
card carrying members of political parties there is no way you can
have a good voter register in the electoral process. Concise
electoral time lines that are not subject to capricious and
arbitrary change: If you have a timeline for doing things you must
adhere religiously to those timelines. You must also have a
political environment that is conducive for the true exercise by
the electorate for the demonstration of their political mandate. If
the political environment is polluted; if there are kidnappings and
insurgency all over the place there is no way you will be confident
to go to the polling unit to go and cast your vote not knowing what
will befall you.

As a National Commissioner I supervise three states, Anambra,
Enugu and Benue states. Before the elections I went to Benue State
because Benue has a significant number of displaced persons. When I
went to speak to them about registering and voting in an election
they told me that is not their challenge now; that their challenge
was how to go back home, feed their children and sleep with their
women. You see a family of 10 living in a small tent that cannot
contain two people. It is not conducive for them to talk about
exercise of mandate when the issues bothering them relate to how
they can go back to their community, feed their children and stop
begging for food in the internally displaced persons camp. The
seventh is that the lead and supporting security agencies must act
professionally and ethically. There is no way the Independent
National Electoral Commission can deploy personnel and materials if
the security agencies are not acting ethically and professionally.
The National Youth Corp members who served as presiding officers
are our sons and daughters and then before you know one ragamuffin
would go and kill that person just because there is no security for
them. So security agencies must act professionally and ethically if
we must have a good election. The other thing is that voters must
be ready to take ownership of the electoral process and be ready to
protect their mandate.

Planning in uncertainty and the waiting game

I am going to speak from the heart and I am going to be very
honest in relation to some of the things I am going to say. The
first challenge we had was what I will call the challenge of the
waiting game. We have a Constitution in place and we have an
Electoral Act in place. But we were also aware that there was an
amendment to the Electoral Act that has been passed by the National
Assembly and waiting for presidential accent. We were also aware
that that Electoral Act made significant changes to the electoral
framework and if we did not prepare for it and the president
accents to it we were definitely going to be in trouble because
that Electoral Act makes provision for the electronic transmission
of results which is a big issue in the electoral process. I say it
is a big issue because 20 per cent of the Nigerian geographical
space is not covered by any major network. So, if we are going to
do electronic transmission of results we must make a determination
of what to do with that 20 per cent that is not covered by any
major network in the country. There is also the significant issue
of cyber crime and hacking of the Internet. If we are going to
transmit electronically we must also take into consideration some
of the challenges we may likely have in terms of the electronic
transmission of results and also taking into consideration the type
of challenges they had in a place like Kenya. We must also take
into consideration the fact that we must also train people to
master some of these new technologies before we deploy them. So, by
the time we realized that there was a possibility that the
Electoral Act may not be signed it was slightly late. The other
issue is procurement. Mr. Chairman, as a lawyer when I want biro I
go to post office (an area where stationeries are sold in Kaduna)
to buy biro and go home. But I got into government only for me to
find out that to procure biro takes six months. So, some of us
couldn’t understand it; so procurement of both sensitive and
non-sensitive materials for the 2019 elections became a burden.

Real reason 2019 election was rescheduled

Now, there was also the issue of the rescheduling of elections
or what we call postponement. Let me just say this and I am going
to make three points relating to that. The first one is that if
anybody tells you that anybody, any individual, any group, any
organization pressured us to postpone the 2019 elections tell the
person that Barrister Okoye said it is not true. The second issue
is whether we were justified in postponing the elections. My answer
is yes and I am going to say why. Mr. Chairman there is what I call
critical assets that must be in place for you to conduct a good
election. Before I come to the issue of critical assets, let me say
this. We don’t print ballot papers and result sheets in Nigeria,
time and the place where we print ballot papers and result sheets
because we are afraid that if we come to Kaduna and give the
contract to one security printer here a politician is likely to go
and give that person up to N200 million so that on election day
they will be deploying and we will also be deploying. And our
ballot papers are also customized to currency standards. Our ballot
papers have more security features than the Nigerian currency. It
has water marks, six security features, sometimes eight and some of
them are customized to each polling units or each registration area
or each local government to prevent Nigerian politicians from
hijacking and cloning them. And when you print these things outside
you have to bring them in; so you will also hire aircraft to bring
them in. Yes, we postponed elections. Mr. Chairman we sent an
aircraft to one of the airports that was supposed to service four
states. After 24 hours the aircraft returned to Abuja without
ballot papers and result sheets. Why did it return to Abuja? He
returned to Abuja without the items I have mentioned because there
was no forklift at the airport. No forklift. So, we sent the
aircraft to Kano. The aircraft offloaded in Kano and then we hired
trucks to begin to distribute and one of the trucks broke down in
the middle of the night. Not only that; some of the political
parties were also having serious challenges. For Zamfara and Rivers
states because we did not know what the Supreme Court would decide
we waited and waited and waited without printing their ballot
papers because the courts said we should remove the logo of the APC
from the ballot papers and the matter was before the Supreme Court
and getting to a few days before elections. We had to go back to
where we were printing ballot papers to ask them to print one with
APC logo and another without APC logo. So, a day to the election we
met as an electoral management body and asked the question: are we
ready for this election? Because some trucks have broken down we
toyed with the idea of starting the polls at 8 O’clock in some
states, 10 O’clock in others and 12 noon in others. We came to the
conclusion that political meaning would be read into it. So, we
abandoned that idea. At the end of the day we agreed that we would
do the elections on Monday. After this resolve as I went to my
office to write the press statement I saw our IT people marching
in. They said Barrister Okoye you said you want to do election
when? I said we have agreed on Monday. They said ehen; that they
need two weeks. We asked what they needed the two weeks for. They
told us that the smart card readers have been customized for that
Saturday the 15th and that it has been programmed to take its time
and location from the network that Saturday and that they have
15,000 smart card readers in Lagos and 11,000 smart card readers in
Kano. It was through begging that they agreed that we can postpone
for only one week. So, what was before us was go ahead with the
elections, bungle them and create mayhem, breakdown of law and
order or postpone the election, apologise to the Nigerian people,
take the blame, take the shame and allow the country to remain one.
These were the two options before us. So, we were surprised that
with this kind of situation people can still insinuate that they
saw Federal Government vehicles moving in and out of the Commission
on the night we postponed the election. The truth of the matter is
that half of the vehicles we use in the Commission bear Federal
Government numbers. So, that some of our vehicles moved out of the
Commission and moved back does not mean that only the people in Aso
Rock use Federal Government vehicles. Half of the vehicles that are
in the Commission still use Federal Government number plates. So,
there was no external influence whatsoever in the rescheduling of
the 2019 elections.

How a Collation/Returning Officers’ family was almost wiped
out and declaration of unintended winner 

There was a particular Returning Officer who refused what was
offered. Political thugs went to his house, entered his parlor and
sat down. The family members were alarmed. They called him while he
was at the collation centre preparing to announce results; they put
the phone on speaker and then asked the wife and children to come.
The man heard the voice of the wife and children and they told him
we give you five minutes to make that return or declaration or else
your family will no longer exist. And a man was being told that his
family will no longer exist because of N70,000 that they are going
to pay him as a Collation and Returning Officer. And some security
agents also carried some ballot boxes and papers and ran away. But
I must be sincere that some security personnel performed
creditably, but others jumped into the muddy waters of partisan
politics and assisted their preferred candidates.

Culled from Sun

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