February 11, (THEWILL) – One of Nigeria’s problems during general elections over the years has been the problem of underaged voters, especially in the Northern part of the country. An exclusive interaction with the Resident Electoral Commissioner, Akwa Ibom state, Mr Cyril Omorogbe, with UDEME UTIP unveils that the BVAS machine introduced for the 2023 pools does not identify underaged voters among other issues.
Excerpts:
There are negative insinuations that your commission is working for the ruling PDP in the state to frustrate other parties during the elections, how true is that?
Yes, Some of the political parties are busy accusing INEC. They say INEC is only working with a particular party and that we’ve already shortlisted candidates as ADHOC staff. As a matter of fact, they said about 3,000 people have been shortlisted to work with the governor of Akwa Ibom and I smiled about it. It was funny because before you say “A”, you must be able to quote sources to back up what you’re trying to say. So, these guys were there saying we’ve already shortlisted three thousand people as ADHOC staff to work with the state Governor. I said, fine, how did we do that? They said we have a portal that we actually opened in Akwa Ibom in order to get 3,000 ad-hoc staff. I said that is a lie. Some people would use the expression: “Lie from the pit hell’ because the portal that INEC has is not in Akwa Ibom. INEC has a portal in Abuja where people just go and then they apply. After they’re done with that portal, the list of people who applied is sent to us. We call them and train them, then we shortlist them because when you train them, some people will probably not grasp the idea of how to use the BVAS. We will test them. If they don’t know how to use it, why would we shortlist them and use them on that day to go and fool themselves? So first, they’ve closed that portal. It’s not INEC Akwa Ibom that closed the portal, it’s Abuja. Second, we have not trained these people yet but we’re being accused of shortlisting these people. So, this man, at first, did not do his homework. I understand the state chairman of Young Progressives Party (YPP), Pastor Nyeneime Andy, was around here yesterday to announce to the world that INEC has already met with PDP, shortlisted 3,000 people and is working. There’s a letter that he signed and he’s already sent it to the world. You don’t go lying to people like this. Make sure you verify. Go and check. You can even come and ask me and I will answer those questions.
My advice to them is: do your research. Find out if that’s true. Then, I don’t care if you want to go on CNN or wherever and tell the rest of the world. Don’t just come up with something you’ve not verified and go on and call a press conference.
The BVAS technology is new in the Nigerian system; what wrong impression would you like to correct about the system?
The number one misconception about the BVAS machine is that people believe that there’s something special that you get from the BVAS that could affect the election. The BVAS machine is an independent machine. All it’s supposed to do is authentication. So, Mr S comes in to vote, you tell him to put his thumb on it, it’s like what happens at the bank, your picture comes up. If you’re the person, they give you the money at the bank. It’s the same thing with the BVAS machine. You put your thumb up there. If the machine confirms that you are the person then you’ll be allowed to vote. If not, they might use your picture and confirm it or else, you won’t be allowed to vote. At the end of the exercise, the same BVAS becomes sort of a camera. They take a picture of the results sheet and upload it. As people are voting it doesn’t record anything. It only records the number of people that came in and were authenticated. So, after that, it’s done but while it’s doing that, it will be relaying this information once in a while with the portal, updating the result. I don’t know if you heard of what happened with judgement in Osun the other day and INEC was saying they had not synchronised the data because most of the time when you send the information it doesn’t get to its destination on time. The reason. those things happen, there are ways you set up a server. It could be refreshed every thirty seconds, one minute or whatever so, if you set it for five minutes, it’ll only come back every five minutes to check if there’s a message. So, that’s why there’s that lag in the system. Once in a while, the BVAS might actually upload your messages to the portal. That’s all the BVAS does. We just use it to take a picture of that result sheet, send it and upload it. So, the stories you are hearing up and down are that some people are meeting with INEC staff because they want to do some configuration of the BVAS. The BVAS cannot do any of that. The BVAS will not give you extra votes. It won’t add or subtract any votes. It has nothing to do with the votes. Tampering with the BVAS will not yield any results. The machine is not adding any votes to what you have. On the day of the election, once they collate in the local polling unit, I am not going to say “stop what you’re doing, let me log in and see what the server in Abuja is saying before I say you win the election”. You bring the results on the ballot paper and I look at it. Mr A is the one that wins. We collate it, tabulate it and declare Mr A the winner. Whatever they have in Abuja is not my business.
Does that mean there can be two separate results?
The result in Abuja is not important. It is just there for transparency. It’s to make sure that the average voter has confidence in INEC. That’s why it’s there, but if the result in Abuja says you have one million votes and my results say you have 4,000, the one in Abuja would be useless.
How sure are we that in this election, there will be no network issues with the BVAS?
It doesn’t need a network to work. You can take that BVAS machine and take a picture, and when you take it to a place with the network, it’ll transmit the information. So, the network is not important in the sense that before the election, those 3 machines will be configured. All they do with the machine is to download the voters in that particular polling unit into the machine in our office here before you go there. So, the voters that have been registered in the machine just need to do the biometric scan and their information will come up on the same system. It doesn’t need a network to function.
Will the BVAS identify underaged voters?
No. It does not identify underaged voters. You will identify underaged voters when you’re voting. Unfortunately, we’re in a country where a lot of people think they want to mind their own business. Think of Akwa Ibom where we have about 4,000 polling units. We don’t have 4,000 employees. INEC as an organisation, we don’t have up to 4,000. We don’t even have 2,000, but someone will sit down and say INEC is supposed to take care of it. All those polling units we’re talking about, the people that will be there will be youth corps and other ADHOC staff that we’ll hire for the election. INEC staff, we don’t have enough to go around all those polling units. So, the question is “INEC, what are you doing about this?”. What can INEC really do?
Would you say the commission has done enough voter education to let the people know exactly what to expect at the pools?
That’s what I’ve been doing. What I need to do next week on this BVAS is to also spend time demystifying the issue of the BVAS machine. People are reading meanings into the BVAS as if it will give you votes or any of that. It is just to make the election easier, to make sure that unregistered people don’t come out to vote, to make sure I can not decide to pick up your own PVC to go and vote in your place. That’s all it is about.
Are there plans by INEC to ensure that the aged and people living with disabilities are not disenfranchised?
We’re doing a lot. We are sending out information to disabled people on and on. Nobody is trying to disenfranchise anyone. For people without their thumbs, the BVAS machine also has facial recognition. Everyone will be able to vote. Some of them will be allowed to go in and leave without queuing. These are some of the things we’re doing.
What percentage of the PVCs would you say have been collected?
Three days ago, when I went around, I calculated that about 80% of them were already collected. It’s still ongoing. Perhaps it will increase in the next couple of days. So far, it’s been quite impressive. The Only issue now is that most of those PVCs that are still unclaimed are very old. ones from people who have probably died or relocated. But in terms of the new people that have registered in the past in only a couple of years, about 80% of them have already collected their PVCs.
Why do we have issues where someone comes to get their PVC only to be told that someone else had collected it?
That is very rare. I don’t know how someone else would collect your PVC when you’re with your slip. A lot of people that have problems were the ones that went on their own basically thinking they were going to game the system. It’s unfortunate because if you remember, some politicians are the cause of this. They were going around with buses taking people to register and the moment they register, they will collect their TVC and they will be given some money. The problem is, you’re dealing with relatively poor people who would do anything for that money. So, even if they have registered before, they’ll register a second time to get a PVC. they can get money. These people registered multiple times to get money from the politicians, not knowing that they won’t be able to get their PVCs because they registered twice or more.
But have you taken delivery of PVCs of all batches of registration?
Yes, we have received the cards. Definitely, the last batch was delivered about one week ago from Abuja.
What security measures has INEC put in place to ensure that the people serving as ADHOC staff are adequately protected?
Recently, as a matter of fact, I was in a meeting with the security agencies. We probably need to attend more meetings to plan and strategise on how we can improve our security posture. I can’t go ahead and say I guarantee everyone that nothing will happen, but we’re doing our best. When the voters and the political parties don’t have that confidence in INEC in the sense that they don’t see you as a transparent organisation or they think you’re biased in any way, you will expect civil strife. So, for me, I make sure I let them know that either way, I’m not supporting anyone. I’m only here to conduct a free and fair election and try to encourage my people to do the same thing and hopefully, we won’t have any form of attack. At the same time, the backup is to make sure that we have enough protection with the agencies and all and to organise in such a way that the areas that are prone to strife and such have enough security operatives to protect those areas.
Are there plans in the future for people like journalists who want to vote but can’t because they have roles to play in the election?
A lot of people that volunteer on that day including journalists, INEC staff, the youth corps, will not be able to vote. We are all in the same boat. This is an issue that members of the National Assembly are supposed to solve, so, when you’re voting for your senators and your members of The House of Representatives, these are things you can ask them to make sure that when they get there, they go ahead and amend our electoral act to allow these people to vote. We don’t make the laws at INEC, we only implement them.
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