Prof. AbdulGaniy Olayinka Raji, resident electoral commissioner in Ekiti State, on his last day on duty in Ado-Ekiti after his transfer in January, speaks with Maureen Chigbo, editor, Realnews on the general elections which begins on February 16. He also explains why it is impossible for the Independent national Electoral Commission to rig elections. Excerpts.

Realnews: The presidential election is on February 16. There seems to be a lot of anxiety and people don’t so much trust INEC, especially given former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s revelation about plans to rig the election.

Raji:  As far as we are concerned in INEC, we have remained independent. We have been transparent in our work.  We have been professional enough and we have been dedicated to our work. So and we have promised and have been promising that we will always be impartial. If you go by our operations you will find out that since 2015 election, up till now we have conducted up to about 200 bye elections and governorship elections and the outcome of such elections are there for the public to see. In many places it is not the ruling party that won. So the votes of the people have been counting with the technology that we have introduced into the elections and the procedures. Well, as far as INEC is concerned we will remain impartial and we have been doing that and people can see from our record.

Realnews: From what you have said one would think INEC is impartial. But what do you think gave rise to Obasanjo’s statement, especially when he revealed details of how the elections will be rigged by Amina Zakari who is in charge of the collation center. Does this worry you?

Raji: If anybody is conversant with procedures of election you will know that nobody can sit somewhere and change results.  All over the nation, after the conduct of the election, results will be collated and written polling unit by polling unit on the results sheets EC40 A,B,C and EC60E will also be completed, filled and pasted at all the polling units .  So if parties are ready, they should collate all these results at each of polling units which will also be given to their party agents. Should there be a change from their own addition and our own then they should take it up.  So nobody can sit in Abuja and change things so I don’t know how the information is coming about because we are going to have all the results from all the polling units collated to get the result.  So, it is not possible.

Realnews: Is it not because of what happened in the Osun election that people are displaying this level of anxiety that the election will be rigged because the returning officer in Osun was about announcing the result when he received a call after which he declared the election inconclusive? You saw what happened finally when the election was conducted they used the police to intimidate voters…

Raji: INEC used the Police?

Realnews: No, I said they used the police.

Raji: As far as INEC is concerned that has nothing to do with INEC. INEC deals with whatever comes to the polling unit. If people are intimidating themselves from coming to the polling unit, that is the job of security agents. As far as INEC is concerned we will be transparent. The fact that somebody received a call does not mean that he was asked to change the result because the procedure is there.  I mentioned that today that when the difference in the result of the person leading and  the second person is less than the total number  of registered voters in all the polling units that were cancelled that election result will be declared inconclusive. But when it is more by implication it means even if we rerun the election all the people whose votes have been cancelled will vote for the second person even if after adding to he has it will not be upto what the first person has, then there is no point in rerunning the election because that will be a waste of resources and time. But where it is possible that should incase all these people vote for the second person then we will rerun. So what is important, I have mentioned it earlier, the security agents should be upto their tasks to ensure that none of those things you mentioned where people are intimidated from getting to the polling unit is prevented. Secondly, we can use our rich culture and tradition and all our social values to ensure that such thing do not happen because those who would do that do not come from heavens. They are our people and we should label them. I did mention that in Africa and developing countries especially in Nigeria, based on our social values, we always ban people who are misbehaving in our environment. You know, the family will feel disgraced that it is one of them that is disrupting the environment and ask him to leave it for them, where has that social value gone to? Even when your children are the most stubborn in the area you are still proud of it. Our grandparents did not do that. So that is one of the values we can imbibe. However, as far as INEC is concerned our procedures are transparent and we will abide by that and all other things should be handled by the security agents and the media should also publish good reports, not fake news and not such that can cause disruption to public peace. They should report whatever is happening not what is not happening.

Realnews: There is allegation that politicians are going about collecting information on the PVC’s of registered voters. How is that going to affect the effectiveness of the PVCs of such voters on election day?

Raji: We are just suspicious that when politicians go around collecting the Voters Identification Number, VIN, of voters PVCs, biodata, account number of registered voters, we suspect they may want to pay the voters ahead, that is inducing them to vote for them and also collecting the VIN with a view to attempting to hack into our information which is not possible. We are not saying that our system is 100 percent fool proof but we have done as much as possible to find out they cannot be hacked into. We have secured our data and for your information since January 2, we have given the full list of voters – 84,000,080 voters to all the political parties so even if you are to change anything you ought to have done so before January 2.

Realnews: One of the concerns of politicians is that INEC is emphasizing on the total number of voters and not on the PVCs collected. In other words they are alleging that INEC is trying to create a room whereby they can manipulate the figures based on total number of voters and not on the total number of PVCs collect and the actual voters.

Raji: If we give you the list of only those who have registered, they will say you see, we have left out some people to be used later. Now we have given them the full list. They are coming up with another story. What is important is that we are using smart card readers. The list of voters is there and any voter who is not accredited on that smart card reader cannot vote. The number of voters accredited in a polling unit is the number of votes we are expecting from that polling unit. So if we cooperate via communal effort nobody can manipulate what is in the smart card reader. We have been transparent enough, we have given out all the people who have registered. We urge politicians to appeal to their supporters to go collect their permanent voters card, PVCs.   We have given the PVCs out at our local government offices. For example, in a state like Ekiti, it means there are 16 places where people are collecting their PVCs. From Wednesday up till today they have been collecting their PVCs from 177 centres or wards close to the door steps of voters. It is unfortunate that as I am speaking to you not up to 3000 have come to collect the PVCs their of the 256,000 that we have. So that is not the fault of INEC. We have spent money on sensitization, on jingles. We have moved around with public address system on public enlightenment. We have moved round speaking with traditional leaders and religious leaders to speak their subjects. We have met with women’s group, we have met with people living with disabilities. We have done everything that we have need to do to mobilise people yet the turn-out is not encouraging. The cards are there for people to collect.

Realnews: Do you think non collection of PVCs is as a result of voter apathy because they know their votes don’t count?

Raji: People can say that before but now peoples vote are counting. Anybody who want to challenge us should come forward with proof. Votes are counting now not like before. If it was happening in the past, that was past. But now we have started introducing new procedures and technologies in elections to make sure votes count. And votes will continue counting.

Realnews:  You raised the issue of technology to prevent fraud. But you know that technology is also garbage in garbage out. Is it not what those in the computer unit garbage in that will garbage out that will not reflect the actual number of votes cast during the election?

Raji: No. You see, the technology we are using now is just for verification. After people are voted they votes will be counted physically and it will be recorded and all party agents will be there, security will be there and stakeholders will also be there and the results will be entered into the result sheets manually. And All of them will confirm that by signing. And copies will be given to all the parties that have agents. So what is hidden there.  That’s transparent enough. The machine is just for verification.

Realnews: But you talked of electronic transmission of resulting …

Raji: I never mentioned that. We are not using electronic transmission of results. Results will be entered into the forms that are provided for such purpose and they will be attested to by all the party agents that are there, security agents and they will have copies. Like we have over 9000 polling units, they can collect all these and add themselves. Each party will have copies. So they can actually do that. For example in Ekiti State we have 2195 polling units so all the party agents have the right to get all the 2195 results and add themselves and see whether it is different from what we have are declaring. So, it is not electronic transmission.. Even when we are doing electronic transmission once the data is encrypted nobody can intercept it. Even then, by the time we moved to electronic transmission we are not going to jettison recorded results. The two of them will go hand in hand.

Realnews: The public perception of INEC is that it will rig the election in favour of the incumbent government despite its effort to win the confidence of the people?

Raji: It is not a matter of getting the people to trust INEC. It is a matter of people given wrong information about INEC. I did mention here last week when we met the operators of radio stations, some of us here and they confess that the people do not get information from local radios but satellite station. You know Nigerians are no longer fund of reading again. And we are moving to the social media where we get the wrong information. So this is the problem we have. So people misrepresent INEC and give wrong information about INEC. The voting procedure and our guidelines criticized by some political parties, we have done clarification here today. Somebody is saying that when a female appears with a male PVC you allow such a person to vote that is not what INEC is saying. It is only when the gender reads female or male and all the other information and biometric are okay but in data entry ‘F’ was entered instead of ‘M’ the person will be allowed to vote. There was display of register for people to come and correct there data, if someone did not come that time we will not say because in the course data entry F was entered instead of M disenfranchise the person when 99 percent of the information is right with only 1 percent wrong. It is not the fault of the voter so we cannot disenfranchise somebody like that. But you see somebody going on social media to say a female will be allowed to vote with male PVC without explaining the circumstance to people

Realnews: Is INEC worried in any way about Obasanjo’s statement that its Chairman is planning to rig the election?

Raji: He is an elder statesman and is entitled to freedom of speech. He can say whatever he likes but if you say something about me that is not right, I have the right to challenge you in court. So if we like we can get worried about it if we feel it is not necessary we move on. So he is an elder statesman and is not free from being sued. If INEC feels that he has misrepresented us it can sue him not attacking him. He is an elder statesman and we cannot say he is right or wrong but he is not immune to being sued.

Realnews: What is your last word to Nigerians as we move towards election February 16?

Raji: My words of advice to Nigerians: first they should trust INEC. I am telling them on behalf of INEC that we will do our best and uphold our core values of professionalism, impartiality and conduct the elections effectively in a free, fair and credible way. At the same time we need their cooperation to ensure that the election moves on smoothly without any violence, rancor and we have numbers that are rolled out so that the public can call us if there are issues. They can reach out to us on our twitter handle, whatsApp and they call us on phone or text to get clarification. It is important that they clarify from us rather than from third source. With that we will all work together and ensure that this country moves forward.

– Feb. 12, 2019 @ 12:49 GMT |