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INEC Voters' Registration, Nigerians And Te Ki Ino Lo Gi (Technology) By Prince Charles Dickson Jos, Plateau Nigeria
Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive. Henry Steele Commager.
Yesterday was a public holiday in Nigeria for the purpose of the revalidation and registration of voters, quite a lot has been written about the entire exercise while the skeptics have continued to pick holes, the optimist amongst us believe we are making progress no matter how slow or how painful. Well time will tell, and timer alone will tell.
Well I have not sought to say it was or will amount to a waste of time and resources but all I want to say in the next few lines is in Femi Kuti's song "Wonder, wonder, wonder, wonder, Wonder, wonder wonder wonder Till we turn to wonderers"
Will anything go right lies the question that Nigerians have no answer to? As the whole exercise exposes our inefficiency at getting the basics right.
First from the very obvious it is what a blind man can see that we are far away from reality again, as the electronic voters' registration exercise noble as the idea could have been, the whole episode has left gapping holes in our nation.
I personal have no problem with the introduction of the Direct Data Capture Machines or the "truthful" implementation of the electronic voting system. But the fact is that in the definition of Fela Kuti, he said that Technology was a yoruba word that when pronounced as "Te KI Ino Lo Gi meant "Press It Let The light Come On". The point here is that one wonders how light would come on in our system, when with every press the switch malfunctions, because, the institutions, the people, the technology and the system it relies upon is faulty.
Between the last yuletide season, Sallah celebrations and end of year vacation, New Year were almost six days of public holidays but that was not enough for Nigerians to exercise their rights. The Machines were not available and in most places not enough, in most places as at then, people were yet to see even the registration officials nor knew what the machines looked like, such sights were only on the television.
Somehow in trickles the Machine started coming in, INEC called it a strategy, laughable but it is only in Nigeria that we redefine failure into something else , we never see it as an opportunity to start again, we do not see it as an avenue to say sorry and start afresh, rather we call it a strategy. In cases we even say that we purposely wanted to fail for reasons beyond human rational.
As the revalidation draws to an end, how many Nigerians have really been registered, how many really when batteries for the machine work like Nigeria itself, start, work and quench, and quench again and again? in areas, the machines registers three people and has to be charged, and then at the end of the day a vicinity that has six hundred residents needs thirty days to register sixty persons.
At other places the complain was that there was no ink, and than at other places Nigerians for what they are exploited themselves. As people provided Generating Sets and charged as much as N50 per person. On the Street where my office is situated a center there had another method, which consisted of N20 to write down ones name and join a long line, while if one wanted what they call "sharp or express" service you pay N100 or more.
Those that advocated for the manual system may after all may not have been wrong, while I believed that all that was needed was for both manual and electronic system to be used together. I ask what is the essence of this Data Capture thing that was supposedly for the reason of trying to eliminate rigging when at the end it is a paper card that is printed from the machine, a card that can be reproduced at any equipped bus stop business center.
The entire piece of paper looks ridiculous especially regarding the huge amount spent for this exercise. In other cases in Lagos I know, also in Abuja and Jos after registering, the machine produced a caricature of the actual person, the printout came out either without ones eyes, or nose or some printouts without the voter's whole head.
This was not as bad as people that had finished the whole formality after hours on the line but because of no ink, Te ki no lo gi simply refused to gi (The machine refused to work).
We are a nation of ignorant people or maybe a people that refuse to speak, and I really think the latter is worse. I beg to be corrected but the entire Direct Capture System lacks all the hyped security features and bla-bla-bla of the Independent Electoral Commission and experts in this thing have remained silent.
I am not all about apportioning blame to the establishment, what about us, you and me, how does the system work when we as a people refuse to make it work? Do we need a public holiday to register to vote, do we need to be begged to register, revalidate or exercise our rights? Do we need to be threatened by the withholding of salaries that are rarely paid on time in the first place? Even with the holiday, many Nigerians used the it to visit friends, spend time with their families and add one more day to their three day weekend.
Let us not forget the voters apathy that has also trailed the exercise. Most times the way we are treated or otherwise is simply a reflection of our attitude to civic duties such as this. The unchangeable truth is that in voting related exercises such as this or the voting, boycotting it in protest clearly makes the problem worse rather than better. And in ours were the situation is already bad, the polithiefician benefits and pays less for his rigging machinery as half the job has been completed for them by us and we complain.
We complain and forget that in politics, an organized minority is a political majority. The strength of the Nigerian State lies in her people but we continually grumble and refuse to charge tactfully at the bull of underdevelopment, with precision so as always we pay the price which in our case is bad leadership and unpurposeful leaders. We are not organized, we cannot put a front, so we have zeroes as heroes.
In all that INEC has done all we see is that the knack of seeing things as they are, and doing things as they ought to be done is lacking. So the issue however remains that though Nigerians themselves may have not done a lot to help the situation, let us not forget that we probably could have done better because we know that common sense is all about given a system its own medicine. Why can we not register en mass and send the PDP and bad government to the desert of history. Most we allow the Adedibus of this Nigeria to keep molesting us...
For our leaders and their brand of Technology let me say that in the words of Wills Roger that "common sense ain't common", it takes a true leader to avoid the expert opinions of experts to do the right thing, so also does it take courage to apply expert opinion in getting the right thing done especially when we are not the expert because citizenry demands more than excuses.
It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense. Our way and manner at applying technology leaves more questions than answers. And that is the problem, the foundation remains faulty and we insist on building skyscrapers on them forgetting that it does not require a terrorist attack for it to collapse.
We have wasted billions in all the whole show of voters registration and we cannot say that the result actually justifies the investment, as usual again as the case is, we have built bridges were there are no rivers, used a hammer to kill an ant, taken a bald man to to the salon because we are blessed sorry I mean cursed with...And that is why we deploy electronic machines and want to use electronic voting in places were there is no light and for people that do not know how a calculator works.
We want to be among the most 25 Industrialized nations come 2020, and the present all-knowing Obj say that those that were the architects of Abacha's Vision 2000 were confused. Wonder, wonder where nothing works, whether rumour or true, Michelin is leaving Nigeria because of operating cost...No energy, no fuel, no this and that, an unsafe environment and still the gospel of reforms continue to go full throttle. Right that Rome was not built in a day but the truth is that we are not even building Ajegunle how much more Rome. Soon someone will tell us in the future that Obj was a mistake that should not have been made in the first place.
Look at the Banking sector after all the consolidation and merger and deployment of billions of Naira, the technology is at best just there, or and as at present only in adverts. The other day a major Bank had a Computer system collapse, while those that operate ATMS do it like it is an Akra vending machine, today the beans is sour, tomorrow, it is too much pepper or no salt.
Until Nigeria and Nigerians can "Te Ki Ino Lo Gi" and actually do it properly, we shall keep wondering, wondering till we turn to wonderers wondering where we got it all wrong. As individuals may we not be like Nigeria, a nation with so much potentials but wasted, if we can avoid that tag and reach our potentials as individuals, then maybe, just maybe Nigerian can yet be great. May the Almighty show us mercy and forgive us our foolishness.
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