Civil societies write Jonathan on voters register
A coalition of civil society groups has
written Goodluck Jonathan urging him to ensure that the country has a
genuinely new digitalized voters register before the 2011 elections.
The groups include: Democrats for
Electoral Reform (CODER); Alliance for credible election (ACE); Save
Nigeria Group (SNG); Campaign for Democracy( CD); Transition Monitoring
Group (TMG) and Voters Assembly.
Addressing the press in Abuja
yesterday, the coordinator of CODER, Ayo Opadokun, said the demand has
become inevitable because the current voters register has been
constructed on technically faulty, inconsistent and perverted data
resources.
Mr Opadokun said he believes Mr
Jonathan, having made several promises to Nigerians and the
international community about the conduct of fair and credible
elections in 2011, should start matching words with actions.
“The former head of state, Abdulsalami
Abubakar, had less than a year, but he put in place the necessary
machinery for the 1999 elections,” he said, adding that Mr Jonathan
still has more than a year to do the necessary things because the
resources are there.
The major components of any genuine
voters register, the group said, must have the following: a well
compiled and normalized database; adequate security to protect the
content of the registry; development of a foolproof procedure of
transmitting data between the data collecting devices and the registry
and repository; uniformity of the applications used to collect data in
the field.
Mr Opadokun, a former official of
Afenifere, lamented that the current national voters register has
violated several of the above points, as software and hardware were
purchased from a vendor.
“When you have the kind of voters’ register we have today, the
result is what you have in Anambra, where names were missing even where
they had clearly registered,” Mr Opadokun said. “The best legacy Mr
Jonathan can bequeath to Nigerians is ensuring that the country has
free and fair elections through a clean and digitalized voters
register.”
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