Stories By Emmanuel Elebeke

Mr Tokunbo Talabi

Superflux International PLC is one of the three secure and commercial prints solutions providers, licensed by the Central bank of Nigeria to serve major financial institution, government agencies and other corporate organizations in Nigeria.

President and Chief Executive Officer of the company, Mr. Tokumbo Talabi is a well known ICT expert who has not hidden his belief that technology can solve some of the electoral issues recurrent with Nigeria’s transitions.

Shortly after the cancellation of April 2nd national Assembly elections by the Independent national Electoral Commission, INEC, Hi-Tech sought an audience with him to assess the impact of INEC action on the local industries and the economy.

Excerpts:

After cancelling the NASS elections recently, INEC announced that it lost up to N4 billion, while the contestants in the elections claimed to have also lost about N51 billion. One of the reasons given for the cancellation was non availability of ballot papers. As a major player in security printing industry, could there have been any way INEC would have avoided this loss?

Yes, there are ways through which INEC would have avoided these huge losses because we have the capacity here in Nigeria to print all the election materials needed by INEC to prosecute this election. The unfortunate part of it is that, we actually approached INEC before the election, both as a private company and under the umbrella of Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, MAN; Data Institute of Professional Printers of Nigeria, DIPPN.

All of us took that approach, but the response we were getting from INEC is that they were afraid of the safety of those things locally.

We gave them all assurances and even told them that some of us make cheque books for banks, recharge cards that have financial value attached . At first, the contention was that, we couldn’t number them, but we know that numbering is not a big issue .

The INEC Chairman was in America when he said they were going to accredit both local and foreign printers.

I’m not aware of any of us either in the MAN or Data Institute that received any delegation from INEC to see the capacity of the local printers. So, really, they don’t know what capacity available locally. The issue is that some Nigerians and government agencies like INEC, don’t value goods made in Nigeria.

You can imagine what N13 billion spent by INEC in printing these election materials abroad will do for this country in advancing local technology and economy. Are we saying that every year, we are going to spend 13 billion in printing? 13 billion can create job for over four thousand people in Nigeria. It is time people have to wake up.

Perhaps there were a lot of technicalities involved. Remember that INEC also admitted that there were some lapses in the already printed election materials, could you have avoided such lapses printing locally?

That is one of the things we lost doing it abroad. If you are doing it locally, it is very easy for you to go and see when the printing started and when it finishes. If there is a mistake, you will be able to correct it but now they have printed abroad and are having problem, they can’t do that correction anymore. And since they are delivering it during this election time, they are bound to have problem.

The other thing is that, even the people printing these papers do not have an idea of what happens in the Nigerian election process like run-off elections. We read in the paper that they printed the run off before the main election. If they have taken the job to a printer who knows his onions, he would have said oh, there will likely be a run-off and printed some for the run off. some of the people they awarded the contracts to are not printers themselves. If you are not a printer, you cannot sequentially do the job.

Part of the materials used in the 2007 election were printed locally and INEC had no problem with that and that was when the contractors in South Africa failed INEC.

If INEC say we don’t have the capacity to print the 2011 election materials, how then did INEC under Prof. Maurice Iwu got the remaining materials it used to conduct the Atiku and Obasanjo Presidential election in 2007?.

I know you bidded for the contract when INEC advertised it. What exactly could you say disqualified you?

I leave that for INEC to explain that. What we actually did was to invite INEC to come and see whether we have the capacity or not. We even asked them to come and measure us with what ever standard they were using with the foreign companies and if we fall short, they should throw us out.

But we did not even see anybody to come and look at our factory. So, how can INEC deny that it was not ignorant of what we can do.

The truth is that, INEC did not take into consideration the capacity we have locally before awarding that contract to foreign firms. I know that if it did inspect us, it may have had a rethink. Giving the contracts to foreigners, for me was not good for our economy.

Lets look at even the cost of the contract, was the N13 billion INEC spent in printing the materials abroad justifiable?

I can not specifically say whether it was costly at that price since I don’t have the needed statistics to arrive at the figure. But what I know is that which ever way, doing it locally would have been cheaper. With local production, it will be far cheaper than that amount spent in abroad.

But there is no need crying over spilt milk. What we are saying now is that in subsequent elections INEC should see the capacity we and competence we have locally and see whether it can help out in some of these issues.