By BEN AGANDE & AUSTIN OGWUDA
ABUJA—CHAIRMAN of the Independent National Electoral Commissioner and his national commissioners were, yesterday, locked in a marathon meeting to review the performance of the Voters Registration Exercise so far and explore the possibility of an extension in the two weeks earlier slated for the exercise.

Human Rights groups, protesters INEC handling of the Voter Registration Exercise, at State House, Alausa, Ikeja, Lagos. Photo by Bunmi Azeez

Though the meeting was being tightly controlled to avoid possible leakages as directing staff of the commission were only invited to brief the commission, Vanguard gathered that the extension of the two-week period was “all but concluded.”

The commission’s Director of Public Affairs, Mr. Emmanuel Umenger, however, cautioned that it was premature to talk of any extension for now until all the machines had been deployed and the number of actual voters who were registered had been ascertained with those left out also known.

A source at the commission said:  “Our preliminary assessment indicates that with the initial hiccups that trailed the exercise in its first few days and is still subsisting, there is no way we can meet the set target of registering 70million voters at the end of the exercise.

It is highly likely that the exercise would be extended by between three days or one week. But the final decision would be taken by the commission after a review of the exercise.”

A national commissioner who spoke with Vanguard on condition of anonymity volunteered that “so far, the picture we are having is not very encouraging. By our assessment, at the end of the exercise this week, we may be able to register slightly more than twenty million people. For an exercise that we had targeted seventy million, this is not good enough.”

Assessment and reports

Pressed to explain whether the exercise is a flop, he declined further comment saying that “the chairman would come out with a position at the end of our assessment and reports from the state would determine the next line of action.”

Vanguard gathered at the commission headquarters, yesterday, that apart from the initial challenge of capturing the finger prints, the abysmal performance of most of the members of the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, deployed in the exercise, especially in the basic knowledge of Microsoft Word based programming has added to the slow pace of the exercise.

The source said: “We were let down by some of the youth corps members who demonstrated incredible ignorance in the use of computers. We had thought that as graduates, it would be easy for them to translate the training modules to reality but we were wrong. We need to do something about the quality of graduates we are producing in the country.”

It was further gathered that apart from the initial problems of rejecting finger prints which had been largely resolved, some the battery components of the machines do not last long, prompting fears in the commission that the products supplied may have been cloned or sub_standard.

“Because of the tight time frame, the commission did not have enough time to assess the computers before deploying them in the field. If there was more time, some of the problems being noticed now may have been corrected” another source at the commission told Vanguard yesterday.

Stolen DDC machines will not affect April elections, says INEC

Meanwhile the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, said there was no reason to worry about stolen Direct Data Capture, DDC, machines, as they would not affect the April general elections.

Mr. Kayode Idowu, Chief Press Secretary to INEC Chairman Attahiru Jega, told newsmen, that all the stolen machines nationwide had been “flanked.”

There had been reported cases of stolen DDC machines since INEC started the process of registering eligible voters for the forthcoming elections.

Idowu said: “The truth of the matter is that when people steal these machines, it is useless to them. When you steal this machine and go and use it for whatever purpose, how will you upload the data into the INEC register. And if you can not upload the data into the register, of what use is it? If there is a case of a diverted machine that has not been retrieved, another one will be deployed and the machine that was stolen becomes useless.”

He added that in most of the cases where the machines were missing, people had been arrested and that they were being prosecuted.

Meanwhile in Asaba, Dr. Ada, the state REC, said yesterday, on  the progress so far over the registration exercise, that despite the initial hiccups the Commissioner had recorded progress with the registration of over 800,000 eligible voters so far. He noted that the Commission was heading towards achieving its projected target at the end of the exercise.

Ada said:  “We have the case of missing DDC machine in Sapele. In Sapele, there is a unit that our one DDC machine has been reported stolen; however, the system we have gives us opportunity to have a back up, so we have a back up of people who have already registered in that particular polling unit so is not really going to affect them.  Of course the case has been reported to the police and we are taking it up from there.

“So far we have been doing well at least the reports from the various local government areas where registration has taken place, we have already registered over 800,000 persons. We have registered males 420,000 males and 440,000 females giving a total of over 860,000.”

He, however, explained that “this number is outside the three Warri local government areas. So hopefully before the week runs we should be able to meet our target.”

The State INEC Commissioner had earlier said while announcing the result of the recent governorship re_run that the number of registered voters that participated in the re-run was put at 1,548,647.