Acn: Inec Can’t Detect Multiple Registration

The Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) has raised the alarm over the capacity of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to detect multiple registration.

According to the major opposition political party, “the INEC server lacks the capacity to detect double or multiple registration, contrary to the lies that the nation has been fed with by the commission, verification is only at the machine level and not at the server level,” the party said in a statement issued yesterday in Abuja by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed.

The statement said: ‘’That means anyone who registers in five different centres, for example, can indeed vote in all those centres without being detected. This is contrary to what Nigerians were told and it is a national calamity,’’ it said.

The ACN challenged INEC to disprove the claim of its inability to detect multiple registration by demonstrating to all stakeholders how it plans to do it, adding that failure to do this, “the Federal Government must set up a panel of inquiry to investigate how the country can be taken for a ride on an issue that is so critical to national survival.”

The panel, it said, must find answers to the following posers: “Who advised INEC to procure a system that cannot detect double/multiple registration? Why did INEC lure Nigerians into a false sense of security that no one can get away with double/multiple registration?

“What, if any, is the level of complicity of the PDP-led federal government in this national calamity? What guarantee can INEC, and indeed President Goodluck Jonathan, now give that April’s general election will be free and fair?” the A CN said.

The party urged other opposition political parties, the Coalition of Democrats for Electoral Reform (CODER) and pro-democracy groups to hold a meeting urgently to find a way forward.

“It simply means that every time INEC wants to detect double/multiple registration, it will have to match each set of ten fingerprints of a voter against sixty million sets of ten fingerprints (assuming 60 million people were registered), and the technology procured by INEC simply does not have the capacity to do that.

The ACN said if “it took the British Police three years to establish a national finger print system, it is not what INEC can do in three weeks.”

“We are therefore left with no option than to conclude that the much-ballyhooed, N100 billion voter registration exercise will not produce a credible or accurate voter register. The voter register that will emerge will be packed full with fake names and riddled with double/multiple registration. Needless to say, therefore, that the forthcoming general elections will neither be free, fair nor credible,” it said.

ACN’s latest alarm over the voter registration is unjustifiable, the INEC said yesterday.

Chief Press Secretary to INEC chairman, Mr Kayode Idowu, said all expenses incurred on the procurement of the DDC machines were logically justifiable, adding that contrary to AC N’s view, the embedded software in the DDC would effectively detect multiple registrations once the date is aggregated at ward, local government, state and national levels.

“How could anyone say this is a hoax? The commission has put software in each of the DDC machines to forstall double registration. The truth of the matter is that double registration will be detected once the data are aggregated.

“For instance, if someone registers at two polling units in a ward, that double registration will be detected when the data get aggregated at the ward level.”

He explained that multiple registrations in different local government areas will be detected when the entire date is aggregated at the state level, while multiple registration done at different polling units in different states will be detected by the time the entire data is collected at the national level.

On the DDC machines, Idowu said INEC saved the nation millions of dollars by purchasing the equipment directly from manufacturer at lower prices.