From a critical point of view, most Nigerians perceive the card reader as a catalyst of unprecedented efficiency in vote casting and credible elections. However, darts off complaint keep flying all over the country concerning the technical glitches of the card reader. Tension further sky-rocketed when the card reader technically-embarrassed President Goodluck Jonathan and his wife in his home town. The machine failed to read their biometrics after several trials. As he was sweating profusely, one could easily see the facial expression of the president as crossed as a bear roused by hibernation. The number one citizen had no option than to be manually-accredited.
However, this is just a drop of water in the bucket of this issue because the Frankenstein monster was present. The training of Election Day personnel in line with the introduction of new technology for the polls was reported as not being extensive than was the case in the past. The use of “half-baked”, ill-prepared polling officers also caused ruckus in operating the gadgets. INEC was also accused of withholding the configuration of the card readers in some “key” areas. But those who eventually became triumphant after the announcement of election results still beat their chests on the integrity of the smart card reader. Before now, according to Inter-Society of Nigeria, 80% of elective offices occupants (13,700 offices) did not win their elections.
Although it can be safely argued that the card reader isn’t an all-success story, we should also be mindful of the fact that there is no perfect human institution in this world, albeit the computerized nature of the card reader has closed the gap of electoral flim-flam across the nation. We arguably had a spick and span election last week. Even the United Kingdom lauded the use of card reader because they are yet to introduce the method into their system. This was immediately followed by an Award received by Jega from the American Embassy.We all couldn’t help but ooh and ah! If you add value to something, you get valued for something. INEC also revealed that the commission had less than 1% incidents of electoral snag in the in the 155,000 polling units across the federation. Perhaps we have said our good-byes to “electoral abracadabra” in Nigeria.
By words and deeds, Jega proved to the watching world that things could only get better. He knows that a corrupt judge is deadlier than a hired assassin. He did the extraordinary in the face of very stiff laissez-faire. He cleared all fogs of negativity on the card reader. He kept his cool even when events were as hot as Hades. He who comes to equity must come with clean hands. The truth has a way of bringing itself to the fore.
Conclusively, on very solid technical grounds, Elections 2015 results will unchangeably be as firm as a mountain because the card reader has opened a new page in Nigerian history.
.jpg)