Seven Nigerian companies may have scaled the first hurdle in the multi billion naira scramble for contracts with the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, ahead of next year’s elections, sparking controversy over compliance with  due process and entrenched interests. Most of the  seven firms are vendors. There was no advertisement for open tender in their selection.

Some of the companies, according to our INEC sources are new while some others participated in the Maurice Iwu voters registration exercise which the new INEC under Prof. Attahiru Jega has dumped wholesale  because the data captured then could not be integrated for credible elections.

Prof. Attahiru Jega, INEC boss

An interesting part of the pre-selection of the seven companies is that with the possible exception of one,  nearly all the companies are headed East precisely, Bangladesh for the TigerIT Bangladesh franchise.  INEC Chairman Prof Jega could have initiated a direct deal with the Bangladeshi company, according to his original promise to save cost.

Insiders in INEC told Sunday Vanguard that TigerIT of Bangladesh had promised a supply of 120,000 units of DELL and Motorola machines with installed software in eight weeks, if INEC is  so interested. The media had been awash with reports in the last few days of insiders’ attempt to mislead Prof Jega by entrenched interests, because he is new to the job and depends on advisers who are not doing full disclosure to him, and could lead him the path of  Maurice Iwu who had very difficult season with companies that brought incompatible software that wrecked his digitization of the voters’ register in 2006.

The shortlisted companies for hardware in the new exercise are:
1. PACIFIC  MILLENIUM,
2.      ZINOX    Technologies
3.      BASMAK
4.      DIMENSION DATA.

Those listed to supply softwares are :
1.      PACIFIC  MILLENIUM
2.      DIMENSION DATA
3.      BASMAK
4.      GOOGLE

Three companies are listed to do integration:
1.      Joint Komputer Company
2.      Image Technology
3.      Resourcery

Maurice Iwu’s INEC had, in 2006, awarded multi billion naira Direct Data Capture contacts to three principal contractors: Trenko International (22,000 units of DDC), Image Technology  (5000 units of DDC) and Intersecurity Ltd (5,000 units). Zinox Technologies later came in to do a rescue job through a sub contract for 12,000 units of Trenko’s 22,000 units using labcal software on HP laptops.

In 2006, all the contractors had a big challenge meeting the contract requirement of the hand held Direct Data Capture machine and had to change to laptops with labcal software. The real problem allegedly cropped up because some yet to be identified contractors reportedly used pirated software which had made integration of captured data difficult, if not impossible – the reason for the jumbo 120,000 units contract of DDC by the new INEC.

For INEC to do a clean job of the voters’ registration exercise, a turn key model has been suggested by INEC to stave off the horrors of the Iwu’s voters’ register.