Professor Attahiru Jega, chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has said it is impossible to successfully clone INEC’s Permanent Voters' Cards (PVCs), as cloned cards will not be machine readable and therefore cannot be used to vote during elections.
Professor Jega, who disclosed this in a recent interview with Metropole magazine, said the permanent voters’ cards are embedded with chips that contain data and fingerprints of each individual registered voter. Jega’s interview is the lead of Metropole’s special issue on the 2015 general elections, due out later this month.
It would be recalled that the Department of State Services (DSS) recently said it raided a facility where it claimed the All Progressives Congress (APC) was attempting to clone voters’ cards and hack into INEC’s database, a claim already denied by the APC.....
While not dismissing the allegations made against the opposition party by the intelligence agency, Professor Jega said INEC was not aware of plans to hack into its database or clone the voters’ cards and therefore did not make any report on the party.
He said: “DSS did not say INEC reported. DSS are in the business of intelligence gathering and security and evidently through their own sources had something to make them act the way that they did. We did not report it. We didn’t ask them to do it and we didn’t know anything like that was happening.
“All I can say is that I know the investment that we made on the permanent voters’ cards, and it is very difficult if not impossible for anybody to clone it. If people clone the card, how are they going to get it read? You can clone it and make it look like an INEC card visibly but the card has to be read on election day using a card reader.
“You must have the card reader and the configuration and everything to do it, and it’s simply impossible. But that notwithstanding, this does not take away from the security agency for trying to do what they believe is their job.”
Jega reaffirmed that only those with PVCs will vote in the February general election and that the commission will ensure that all registered voters can collect their permanent cards before the elections.
“The reason we introduced the permanent voters card is to deal with past irregularities in our electoral process,” he said. “In the past people can buy cards and give to other people to vote. People can vote several times in the course of the day and we believe that it is very important that we have a device that can help us ensure that people can vote only once and the card reader will help us do that.
“You recall that during the registration, once you register we give you a temporary voter’s card. But we have cleaned that register and removed all the duplicates so anyone who has done multiple registrations will only have one permanent voter’s card. If you now say let’s go back and allow people to use the temporary voters card, then obviously we will be undermining the integrity of the register that we have produced. Secondly if you allow people to use the temporary voters’ card then you cannot use the card reader because the card reader cannot read the temporary voters card. The card reader can only read the permanent voters card.”
Jega acknowledged that INEC has had challenges with the production and distribution of the PVCs, but that the commission is overcoming the challenges. He also dismissed insinuations that INEC is disenfranchising some voters. “Until February when somebody comes and his or her card is not printed that is when you can say INEC has disenfranchised people by not producing cards for them,” he said. “But you can be absolutely certain that latest by the 30th of January we should have all the cards printed.”
He disclosed that INEC has made adequate plans for prompt replacement of defective card readers on election day and that INEC is ready to deliver an election that will be better than that of 2011.
In addition to the extensive interview with Jega, the election issue of Metropole will feature a special package titled “Fierce Battle for Aso Rock,” which will examine the dynamics of the 2015 presidential election.The issue will be on sale in major stores and with vendors across Abuja later this month.
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