There is nothing anyone would want more than a free and fair elections this year as the polity has never been this heated.From Mudslinging worth paying attention to by both parties on one hand and outright ‘Motor park’ rants on the other.INEC remains my biggest fear;the confused umpire.

INEC didn’t test the card reader in elections prior to the postponed February polls and didn’t even test before the postponement which was just a week before the scheduled date which was on grounds of Insecurity.Is there a plan no one is telling us?

When Prof Attahiru Jega was appointed and we were serenaded with tunes of his credibility and integrity,I told people we needed to thread with caution and not forget the lessons We have learnt from experience.We should always bear in mind the person who appointed him is a politician with a party and political interests whether or not he is smart enough to understand the importance of ceding some territories to the opposition.

Jega seemed fired up for the task and introduced the biometric database in place of our archaic voter registration system which we were meant to believe left absolutely no room for Electoral malpractices. Elections were postponed for a week back then because of logistical hitches on the part of INEC.Presidential Election results hadn’t even been announced before the then CPC Chairman, Prince Tony Momoh alleged on TV that the INEC computers had a software that deducted GMB votes in his strongholds;places like Katsina and Kano.

Whether or not those elections were rigged or flawed to use a milder term is subjective.As accustomed to settling for less as we may be,INEC’s ineptitude and indecisiveness could be too rotten a morsel to swallow.

Just like it did with the biometric database,it has sold us the ‘Card Reader’ with ease and ordinarily we would shower Jega with encomiums for further enhancing our Voting system to suit International standards but fellow citizens,59% Success rate in biometric (Finger print) authentication is something to worry about going by INEC’s antecedents.

We had a lot of time before February.Years as a matter of fact so why anyone would choose the few weeks preceding an election to test the Smart card reader baffles me to no end.Would we have blindly gone into the postponed February polls with an innovation INEC subsequently deemed worth testing?.I am not a pessimist and I am very glad Smart Card Readers can fully authenticate PVCs which is its primary aim but What if We had used them in the February polls and provisions weren’t made for incident forms where finger prints couldn’t be authenticated as is the case now?

A slim margin of error only means there is room no matter how little for a flaw or fraud.A card reader could authenticate a card which doesn’t belong to the bearer but won’t stop him from voting if it doesn’t verify his fingerprint because all he has to do is fill an incident form.

Here,one can’t help but remember stories of politicians offering money for PVCs sometime back.

We understand we are a third world country and that adapting to significant changes entail a lot of mistakes but such mistakes are unacceptable if they could have been easily avoided.

Jega’s intentions are good and commendable no doubt but He seems to be doing the right thing at the wrong time.And every good innovation would amount to naught if it can’t guarantee you success where it counts.

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– Umar Hassan is a lawyer based in Kano.