Date: 2018-03-06

Malam Mohammed Haruna is the National Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) supervising Kwara, Kogi and Nasarawa states. He was recently in Kwara to monitor the Continuous Voters' Registration (CVR) and he spoke on his observations and the preparation of INEC for the 2019 elections. Excerpts:

What is the purpose of your visit to Kwara?

As the National Commissioner in charge of Kwara, Kogi and Nasarawa, once or twice every month I'm supposed to visit the states to see how things are going regarding the continuous voters' registration; which is the first time INEC would be doing that, even though it is in the law, but had not been done previously. Before now, continuous registration was usually done few weeks to an election, but it is different this time around because the Chairman of INEC insists that it must really be continuous.

What were your observations at the places you visited?

The usual problems that are always encountered: we started in April last year and I was here to flag it off and we usually take stock of what we are doing every quarter and at the end of each quarter we collate all the results, check and cross check before we start printing the Permanent Voters' Cards (PVCs). There is the issue of unclaimed PVCs, what is the commission doing about that?

That is a very big problem for us because right now we have seven million unclaimed PVCs nationwide, and for Kwara, the unclaimed PVCs are about 240,000. That is good of course; it is still a fraction of the total PVCs produced because total registered voters is 70 million and since we started the CVR, we have registered additional five million. So if we project, by the time we would be set for elections, it should be about 80 million. When we do the arithmetic, the unclaimed PVCs are just a fraction of total registered voters; but every vote should count. Anybody who has registered should be able to vote for whatever reason; and that is our concern. INEC is concerned that as many as seven million voters have not collected their PVCs. Mind you, the word is collection, not distribution. It is not INEC's responsibility to take the cards to voters' houses because the criterion is for people to present themselves for registration and should also do same to collect the cards. We have done a lot of advocacy and voter education to persuade people to collect it, but they still don't and part of their reason is that their votes don't count. But this INEC, in the last two years, has shown that votes will count, and so far we have conducted 179 elections, only four have been voided.

Increasingly, the quality, the credibility, fairness and freeness of our elections have improved because each of them has been an improvement on the others. With the elections conducted so far, hopefully people should begin to see that their votes will count and in turn encourage them to collect their PVCs and come out during elections to vote.

There is also the challenge of not being able to register as a result of lack of enough machines; what is INEC doing about that?

We have done a lot of things on that since we started. There are lots of choices like doing it at the polling or ward levels; which we realise will gulp more than the entire budget of the commission, hence we decided to do it at the local government level. When we gathered all the challenges, we added some Direct Data Capture (DDC) machines with some local governments getting more than others, depending on population. At a time we also experimented with rotation of the machines, but now we have taken delivery of more modern DDC machines and Kwara will get 10 of them.

I was at Ilorin West Local Government and I saw the crowd; which is worrisome, but I assured them that they would get the new machines soon. People lament not being registered without APC hand band; did you hear anything on this?

There is nothing you will not hear. We conducted elections in Kano and there was no single issue of underage voters, but people were spreading rumours of that. I don't know why they are doing that or maybe because they have political issues they want to use to rubbish our voters' register or what. But I understand that when we are in elections year, people try to play politics with every issue, and that is not healthy for our democracy.

Credibility of voters' register is the basis of any election. At the end of any registration, we harmonise our register with all stakeholders where we expect them to raise objections and correct any anomaly before we print the PVCs. As National Commissioner for Kwara, Kogi and Nasarawa, what is your message to the people of these states?

People should please come out to register, collect their cards and vote during elections. They should know that INEC is ready to ensure that every vote counts; and we have proven our mettle with the elections we have conducted so far. If INEC's results do not tally, the results will not be declared.