Nigeria: Card Reader - So Smart, It Can't Read
NIGERIANS should thank the Almighty that it was President Goodluck
Jonathan, and not Maj-Gen Muhammadu Buhari, who had to spend the better
part of an hour waiting for the smart card reader to unfold his
biometric details. Four card readers after, several consultations and
part-time tutorials on operating the machine, the card reader did not recognize the President and his wife Dame Patience Jonathan. They left
for home, returned, tried again, the same result.
The President and his wife finally used the "incident form" at their
voting centre in Otueke. What would have happened in Daura if the card
reader rejected Buhari's card? Would the story not be that there were
plans to embarrass Buhari? How would voters have reacted? Would it not
confirm the All Progressives Congress, APC, allegation that the Peoples
Democratic Party, PDP, hired an Israeli security expert to jam the card
readers?
Again, it was not the famed readiness of the Independent National
Electoral Commission, INEC, that saved the day. The patience of
Nigerians and the latitude they grant their public institutions saw the
elections through. INEC was not ready, as usual. Kayode Idowu, INEC
spokesman typified the legendary arrogance of INEC. "It is not that the
card reader did not work," he said of the Otueke incident, "it did not
read the President's biometrics." So much for sophistry.
The arrogance of INEC officials who hold voters responsible for the
card reader picking their biometrics was another notch in the heights
INEC has raised its relations with the public. We are to assume that the
card reader also caused the late arrival of materials, a traditional
INEC forte, or the mixing up of the materials. What does INEC intend to
prove with these elections?
INEC led Nigerians into believing that the card reader was the elixir
for surmounting challenges on credibility of elections. If we had not
interrogated INEC on the card reader, it would not have conducted the
tests that fully confirmed its ignorance about the workings of the
device. The retort that those who wanted to rig the elections were
against the device was cheap blackmail. INEC had not educated the public
or its officials on the card reader. Speculations about how the card
reader worked continued into the polling booths.
We were advised to wash out hands, and shun cosmetics; none of these
was from INEC. If hands were to be washed, what happens to them after
hours of waiting, under the sun, for INEC officials? Voters were the
ones educating INEC officials to remove the flimsy cover on the device -
in some places, that was what made the card readers work. INEC claimed
to have trained its officials.
Back to the Otueke incident, which cast loads of doubts on INEC and
its preparedness, how was INEC able to produce the four card readers
used for the President? The rapidity of their delivery raises questions
about INEC's public posture that it programmed card readers to specific
polling booths and that another polling booth could not use them. Were
four INEC card readers dedicated to the president's polling booth? What
could have informed INEC's pro-activity in this instance?
Card reader failures were more wide spread. We knew about Otueke
because of the media beam on the President. What was the fate of
millions of voters in other places, away from media attention? Could the
failures have been avoided? They could at least have been minimized if
INEC bridled its enthusiasm about a technology that it did not test and
was using in elections that polarized Nigerians along several lines, the
card reader was the final polarization. The use of the card reader did
not approximate to free and fair elections. INEC would not listen.
When the results are out, whoever wins could be full of praises for
the card reader, but Nigerians should have better control of their
institutions. INEC and its supporters failed to admit there was nothing
magical about smart card readers. Like ATM or POS machines, we regularly
used, they can fail. Under certain circumstances - storage, poor
handling, dust, weather conditions or poor network - they would not
work. INEC promoted the card reader as if it was a different technology,
infallible, like the Titanic, maybe.
Nigerians should be wary of wasteful and expensive technologies that
create new problems. Those, who like copying Ghana, claimed the device
worked there, never mentioned that like in Otueke and other places, the
card reader did not work in some places in Ghana. When we remember the
elections were postponed for six weeks, we can only ponder and wonder
what INEC's magical device would have done on February 14. We have only
begun the long trek to free, fair and credible elections.
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