BY CLIFFORD NDUJIHE, HENRY UMORU & IKECHUKWU NNOCHIRI
LAGOS — UNFAZED by reported plans of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to knock off six million votes from the 12,214,853 which the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, presidential candidate, Maj General Muhammadu Buhari, got at the April 16 presidential polls, leaders of the party have outlined measures they would adopt to stop President Goodluck Jonathan at the Tribunal.

The Party is hiring a foreign firm that has participated in 300 electoral processes in 19 countries with more than 500 million voters tallied for government, private and multilateral organizations, to scrutinise ballot papers used for the presidential polls.

Buhari

It has, therefore, asked the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to ensure that the ballot papers were safe and in good condition. Preferably, it wants the vital documents kept with the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN.

Proof of victory

This is coming as the PDP said it was ready to prove that its victory was well deserved and told CPC and Buhari that they would meet in court.

The CPC, Sunday, began its quest to overturn PDP’s presidential victory by filing its petition at the Tribunal. The party’s National Legal Adviser, Abubakar Malami, SAN, who said yesterday that the party had ample evidence to show that the PDP rigged the presidential polls, hinged the post-polls violence in some northern states that claimed hundreds of lives and property to the flawed election.

Malami said: “To us in the CPC, it is our belief that the break down of law and order that ensued after the declaration of President Goodluck Jonathan as the President-elect on the basis of concocted results was the by-product of the determination to win elections by incumbents by any means which has always characterised such actions by historical antecedence.”

In a statement entitled: “Seeking to establish the truth of the 2011 presidential election,” the legal adviser condoled families of those who lost their lives or property as a result of the violence and dissociated CPC from the mayhem.

He said:  “Our party is composed of responsible and disciplined members who do not in anyway subscribe to the perpetration of any evil much less of encouraging any. Our national history has, however, taught us that the determination to win elections by incumbents by any means has always given birth to spontaneous reactions in the form of break down of law and order.”

With forensic/biometric system of evidence, Malami said CPC would show incontrovertibly that the votes were rigged. He said INEC’s capturing of 10 finger prints of voters was a novel idea that can help solve, forever, the challenges of multiple voting and outright concoction of results.

In view of the 180 days life span of election petition provided for in the 2010 Electoral Act, Malami noted: “With the level of modern day technology, it won’t take long to conclude this procedure and establish the truth of the election. At the most, we can estimate between 50- 65 days to be able to get all voters register authenticated; all disputed ballot papers examined, any other electoral document assessed; all findings compiled and submitted to the court, and return of all source data and documents to INEC.”

He added: “Because of our experience in the processes of election cases in tribunals, we have learned that election petitions for the most part in the past failed to gain ground in our tribunals mainly because of paucity of evidence to prove cases. This, therefore, left us with no other option than to seek scientific ways, means and methods as the best and most effective platform to prove our case; hence our adoption and employment of forensic/biometric system of evidence.

Technical biometrics

“The fact that there are no two people with the same fingerprint, every fingerprint can, therefore, be scientifically verified basically through the following preliminary basics of the technical biometric/forensic methods which details will be made available by the experts:

*Since during the voters registration exercise, all the 10 fingerprints of all voters were captured and stored in INEC’s Standard Data Bank, it is certain that every voter must have used a finger to vote in the election. This then makes it possible to authenticate and verify every print on every ballot;

*An electro-mechanical optical scan device with automatic tabulation called a “mark-sensing” system will be used; in this case the mark is the fingerprint;

*We expect INEC to produce the ballot papers voted upon with the fingerprint organized on the basis of their polling units, wards, local government area and state and delivered for processing. These will be processed on polling unit basis, which means that the scanners will take an image of each ballot paper, store the image in the appropriate location corresponding to its polling unit, wards, LGA and State;

*When all images of ballot papers for a polling unit are taken, a processing programme containing the agreed upon sorting parameters will read the party name which has a fingerprint, then extract the fingerprint and store.

Thereafter, the following processes is then expected to take place within the records of each polling unit:
*Compare all fingerprints with each other to detect all repetitive fingerprints.

*Count all repetitive fingerprints.

*Deduct the repeated fingerprints from the count for that polling unit.
*Present a table of results showing non-repeated and repeated votes.

*Compare all fingerprints processed with the already registered and stored fingerprints of that unit for any discrepancy, and
* Count the total number of discrepancy, if any.

* This process will be repeated for each polling unit.

Malami said two key factors which would affect the time within which the work would be completed were the speed at which CPC legal team completed the process in the Tribunal leading to the order of the release of the source data and documents (voter registration records, stored fingerprints, ballot papers, etc.) by INEC and the physical condition of the ballot papers.

“The second is The condition in which the ballot papers are received will determine if they need preparation or they will go straight into the scanners.”

He added: “On this second score, we urge INEC and we will plead to the Tribunal to order the Commission to guarantee the safety and good condition of all the election materials. In fact, we will prefer the materials to be safe-kept in the vaults of the Central Bank.”

We’re ready for CPC  –  PDP

However, PDP National Publicity Secretary, Professor Rufai Ahmed Alkali, told reporters in Abuja, yesterday, that the PDP was battle ready to meet the CPC and its presidential candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, in court.

Alkali said there was no reason to be afraid to meet its major opposition, at the just concluded presidential election, in court, adding: “First and foremost, we have always prayed that after the first election, as much as possible, we wanted the system to be allowed to stabilise so that Mr. President and our governors will be allowed to do the work they want for our country.

“You know what litigations are all about. The court process diverts attentions and would not allow the president to concentrate. We have always prayed that we in the party, for instance, in some states where we lost, our governors, senators and members of House of Representatives have come out to accept their defeat.

“We also hope that others will show the same magnanimity by accepting their defeat. It is the right of anybody who loses election to go to court. We cannot stop him, because it is his right.

The only unfortunate thing is, initially, we thought that the candidate of the CPC promised he is not going to court, so we do not know what happened, he changed his mind that he is going to court now. For us what we are only saying is that we have to prepare and meet him at the court when the time comes.”