Card Readers are set for election - INEC

INEC  Boss  Prof.Attahiru  Jega

The Independent National Electoral Commission said it met on Monday to consider field reports from the public demonstration of Smart Card Readers conducted in 12 states on Saturday.

The states were Rivers and Delta (South-South), Kano and Kebbi (North-West), Anambra and Ebonyi (South East), Ekiti and Lagos (South West), Bauchi and Taraba (North East) as well as Niger and Nasarawa (North Central).

A statement issued by the Chief Press Secretary to the Chairman of the commission, Mr. Kayode Idowu, in Abuja on Tuesday, said that INEC observed that its decision to deploy SCRs for the 2015 general elections had four main objectives.

These objectives, according to him, are to verify Permanent Voter Cards presented by voters at polling units and ensure that they are genuine, INEC-issued (not cloned) cards.

He said that from the reports on Saturday’s exercise, this objective was achieved 100 per cent.

Another one, according to him, is to biometrically authenticate the person who presents a PVC at the polling unit and ensure that he/she is the legitimate holder of the card.

In this regard, he said there were a few issues in some states during the public demonstration, but added that overall, 59 per cent of voters who turned out for the demonstration had their fingerprints successfully authenticated.

Nevertheless, he added that the commission, in agreement with all the registered political parties, decided that “where biometric authentication of a legitimate holder of a genuine PVC becomes challenging, there could be physical authentication of the person and completion of an Incident Form, to allow the person to vote.”

Another reason for the exercise, he added, was that the SCRs provided what he described as disaggregated data of accredited voters in male/female and elderly/youth categories.

He said this disaggregation was vital for research and planning purposes, but which INEC until now had been unable to achieve. The demonstration on Saturday fully served this objective, Idowu added.

He said, “The SCR sends the data of all accredited voters to INEC’s central server, equipping the Commission to be able to audit figures subsequently filed by polling officials at the Polling unit and, thereby, be able to determine if fraudulent alterations were made.

“The public demonstration also succeeded wholly in this regard.”

Source; Punch  Newspaper