NGA:Card reader - So smart, it can’t read

Nigerians should thank the Almighty that it was President Goodluck Jonathan, and not Maj-Gen Muhammadu Buhari, who had to spend the better part of an hour waiting for the smart card reader to unfold his biometric details.

Four card readers after, several consultations and part-time tutorials on operating the machine, the card reader did not recognise the President and his wife Dame Patience Jonathan. They left for home, returned, tried again, the same result.

The President and his wife finally used the “incident form” at their voting centre in Otueke. What would have happened in Daura if the card reader rejected Buhari’s card? Would the story not be that there were plans to embarrass Buhari? How would voters have reacted?

Would it not confirm the All Progressives Congress, APC, allegation that the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, hired an Israeli security expert to jam the card readers?

Again, it was not the famed readiness of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, that saved the day.

The patience of Nigerians and the latitude they grant their public institutions saw the elections through. INEC was not ready, as usual. Kayode Idowu, INEC spokesman typified the legendary arrogance of INEC. “It is not that the card reader did not work,” he said of the Otueke incident, “it did not read the President’s biometrics.” So much for sophistry.

Obasanjo being accredited with the Card Reader

The arrogance of INEC officials who hold voters responsible for the card reader picking their biometrics was another notch in the heights INEC has raised its relations with the public. We are to assume that the card reader also caused the late arrival of materials, a traditional INEC forte, or the mixing up of the materials. What does INEC intend to prove with these elections?

INEC led Nigerians into believing that the card reader was the elixir for surmounting challenges on credibility of elections. If we had not interrogated INEC on the card reader, it would not have conducted the tests that fully confirmed its ignorance about the workings of the device. The retort that those who wanted to rig the elections were against the device was cheap blackmail. INEC had not educated the public or its officials on the card reader. Speculations about how the card reader worked continued into the polling booths.

We were advised to wash out hands, and shun cosmetics; none of these was from INEC. If hands were to be washed, what happens to them after hours of waiting, under the sun, for INEC officials?

Voters were the ones educating INEC officials to remove the flimsy cover on the device – in some places, that was what made the card readers work. INEC claimed to have trained its officials.

Back to the Otueke incident, which cast loads of doubts on INEC and its preparedness, how was INEC able to produce the four card readers used for the President? The rapidity of their delivery raises questions about INEC’s public posture that it programmed card readers to specific polling booths and that another polling booth could not use them. Were four INEC card readers dedicated to the president’s polling booth? What could have informed INEC’s pro-activity in this instance?

Card reader failures were more wide spread. We knew about Otueke because of the media beam on the President. What was the fate of millions of voters in other places, away from media attention?

Could the failures have been avoided? They could at least have been minimised if INEC bridled its enthusiasm about a technology that it did not test and was using in elections that polarised Nigerians along several lines, the card reader was the final polarisation. The use of the card reader did not approximate to free and fair elections. INEC would not listen.

When the results are out, whoever wins could be full of praises for the card reader, but Nigerians should have better control of their institutions. INEC and its supporters failed to admit there was nothing magical about smart card readers. Like ATM or POS machines, we regularly used, they can fail.

Under certain circumstances – storage, poor handling, dust, weather conditions or poor network – they would not work. INEC promoted the card reader as if it was a different technology, infallible, like the Titanic, maybe.

Nigerians should be wary of wasteful and expensive technologies that create new problems. Those, who like copying Ghana, claimed the device worked there, never mentioned that like in Otueke and other places, the card reader did not work in some places in Ghana.

When we remember the elections were postponed for six weeks, we can only ponder and wonder what INEC’s magical device would have done on February 14. We have only begun the long trek to free, fair and credible elections.