BY BEN AGANDE, Abuja

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) yesterday rolled out over 100,000 Direct Data Capturing Machines across the country to kick-start the registration of eligible voters that would be involved in the series of elections scheduled for this April.

The Direct Data Capturing machines

Since his appointment as the chairman of INEC, Professor Attahiru Jega has made the compilation of a credible new voters register the cornerstone of his determination to ensure the conduct of free, fair and credible election in a country where most people appear to have given up on such possibility.

While Professor Maurice Iwu held sway at INEC, the Voters register which he used for all the elections was so flawed that each election got worse than the previous one. In one instance in Anambra State for instance, names of prominent world leaders ,like Nelson

Mandela as well as prominent sportsmen like Mike Tyson found themselves into the register apart from the multiplicity of several names in the  register which made the conduct of a credible election with such document impossible. Incredibly, Professor Iwu defended the credibility of that register!

On assumption of office after he was cleared by the National Assembly, Prof. Jega made the compilation of a fresh voters register a priority. Explaining the rational behind it, Professor Jega had explained that “One of the first things we did was to look at the old voters register and we were concerned about what we discovered about the current register.  It clearly showed a lot of discrepancies which made us to decide that the current register is not good enough for next (this) year’s elections. Obviously the task of attempting to do a fresh voters’ register to prepare for elections early next year is very formidable and challenging task but we have overcome some of these challenges”.

For a man whose appointment received almost a unanimous  national applause, Jega’s journey to achieving this task began with his request for  N86 billion to purchase Direct Data capturing machines that would register eligible voters that would take part in the exercise.

When the request was sent to the National Assembly for approval, the overwhelming support from both chambers of the National Assembly was a pointer to the fact that nothing would be spared to ensure that Jega succeeds in his determination to ensure the conduct of a free, fair and credible election.

Although Iwu made a feeble attempt to capture the image of voters electronically, the combined forces of little determination and substandard materials conspired to make the exercise a waste of time and resources as the electronic capturing of data was all but in name.

To overcome this challenge, Jega embarked on extensive and intensive consultation with all authority on electronic voting to ensure  that the machines which would be used for the exercise are not only the most appropriate but personnel are better trained for the exercise.

“We will ensure that the problems of sub-standard equipment are addressed and the past problem of poorly-trained registration officers we are also preparing that our ad-hoc staff are appropriately and adequately trained. We are planning to acquire the  Direct Data Capture Machines (DDC) and we are going to deploy one in each of the 120,000 polling units in the country.

After several months of painstaking planning, INEC awarded contracts for the supply of the machines to three companies who have been battling to meet the deadline for the supply of the machines on time for it to be ready for the registration of voters.

The voters registration has not been without its problems. Some of the first batch of machines that were supplied to the country was stolen at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport where they had been kept upon arrival. Although the National Chairman of INEC had assured that such theft would not affect the overall integrity of the exercise, many Nigerians are wary that some smart desperate politicians may attempt to clone the machines with the intention of compromising the exercise.

Sunday Vanguard however gathered that to check such possibility, INEC infused some security feature that would make it highly unlikely for the machines to be compromised. For instance, each of the 120,000 machines is said to be configured to a specific polling unit such that if it is to be moved to another unit, it would cease to function. Similarly each machine is equipped with a tracker and would be monitored from the headquarters of the commission 24 hours of the day.

To avoid multiple registrations, each voter’s 10 fingerprints would be captured during the exercise and the computer would automatically delete any multiple registrations that it is able to detect in the system. But the exercise is not without its challenges.

There were reports that some of the NYSC members that were trained to handle the machines were slow at mastering the task of registering voters. In addition, there are fears that desperate politicians would try to hijack the machines in order to frustrate the exercise. But whatever happens in the next few days, the success or otherwise of the 2011 elections would be determined by how well INEC is able to successfully conduct the registration of voters and how acceptable the exercise would be for Nigerians.