Card reader or no card reader…

Last Monday Tsinin Kusa came with alarming information. He said a man he planted inside Goshin Bauna’s campaign office to spy for us brought information that our opponents have perfected plans to rig the elections. I said, “Haba Tsinin Kusa, is that possible? Don’t you hear what INEC people are saying, that they have put […]

Last Monday Tsinin Kusa came with alarming information. He said a man he planted inside Goshin Bauna’s campaign office to spy for us brought information that our opponents have perfected plans to rig the elections. I said, “Haba Tsinin Kusa, is that possible? Don’t you hear what INEC people are saying, that they have put in place new measures, they deployed new gadgets and that there will be enough security to prevent rigging on election day?”
Tsinin Kusa was still laughing when Maikahon Karo joined us in my living room. He arrived together with two important members of my campaign team. One of them is Haruna Anbuga Anbarka, our coordinator for Tafki South while the other is Salau Injiniya, our head of Information Technology. Haruna Anbuga is in charge of Tafki South which comprises Tsamiya, Tsibiri, Marmaro and Gangare local governments. Tafki South is my main opponent Goshin Bauna’s home turf. Anbuga is very useful to us, being a former top aide of Goshin Bauna and the Governor. Even though he himself did not tell me that, I heard from people that he fell out with them over a woman. Just like Goshin Bauna, Anbuga too is a womaniser and they quarrelled over one plump girl during a campaign tour. According to people the girl was sourced by Anbuga who kept her in a hotel room. He went to do an assignment that Goshin Bauna gave him and by the time he came back, the girl was nowhere to be found.
Anyway, Anbuga Anbarka confirmed to us that Goshin Bauna’s people are busy cloning permanent voters’ cards. He said they have even hired two White men who were among the contractors that supplied the cards to INEC, that they are hidden in one guest house inside the state polytechnic where they are cloning the cards. He said they chose that guest house because it is close to the polytechnic’s Chemistry Laboratory, that they go into the lab at night to do titration, centrifuging and autoclaving all as part of the card cloning. When we heard that, Maikahon Karo briefed our Youth Wing Leader Maitawaye who sent three of his trusted boys into the campus to case the joint. They came back and said they barged into that house but there were no White men there, only one old woman and her children.
When we could not find where Goshin Bauna’s people are cloning the PVCs, Anbuga Anbarka brought another idea. He said, “Instead of wasting our time searching for their hideout, why don’t we clone the PVCs ourselves? Since Tafki South is their stronghold we should clone PVCs for Tafki Central which is our stronghold. That way we will balance out any rigging that they do.” That was why Salau Injiniya was brought to the meeting. We asked him if he could arrange for us to clone PVCs. Salau is a young man; he finished his NYSC only two years ago but he is a whizz kid with IT and with computers. He said, “I have studied the problem. I have even hacked into the computers of the contractor. We can get some chips, clone them and embed them into a card. The problem is that we don’t know the code that they use to encode their PVCs. I hear there is a separate code for each polling unit. So, unless I can get their code machine I cannot configure the cloned card properly.”
We asked Maitawaye whether he could get the coding machine. He said he will send his boys to try to get one but before they came back Salau Injiniya raised another point that worried us. He said, “Even if we get the machine and encode our cloned PVC, my fear is that thing they call card reader. Every PVC must be passed through the card reader before a voter is accredited. My fear is that there is one secret code on the chip which the card reader will recognise. I want to be sure of that before we can test our cloned PVCs, otherwise our people will turn up at the polling station with a cloned PVC and they will pass it through the card reader and catch them.”
What the Injiniya said upset Anbuga Anbarka. “Aargh!” he said. “This IT wahala is too much. Injiniya, are you sure you can do this? Or is it that you don’t know this IT very well like Goshin Bauna’s people know it? Why are you giving one excuse after another? There in Goshin Bauna’s office they are not giving excuses. They are busy cloning the cards!”
At that point Maikahon Karo stood up. He puffed at his Rothmans’ cigarette, chewed a piece of kola nut and snuffed local powder from a small bottle. Then he said, “Look here Injiniya, we are going to solve this problem in our old way. This your new IT will not work because you are far behind the White people who did this PVC. Is it not their grandparents that invented Chemistry and Physics? So, just pack your things and go. Go and continue to maintain our website, our Facebook page and our Twitter handle. The rest you leave to us.”
When the IT man left Maikahon Karo turned to us and said, “Look, this problem is very simple. Didn’t I hear Injiniya say that they will use card reader to check every voter’s card before he is accredited to vote? So it means if there is no card reader in any polling station there will be no voting there? Is that not very simple? Let us identify the areas where Goshin Bauna is likely to get many votes. Maitawaye will then ensure that no card reader gets to that polling station. That’s all.” Alhaji Gohe then said, “How are we sure Maitawaye can stop the card reader? You know the soldiers will have returned from Sambisa by then. They are the ones that will carry card reader to the polling station, inside an armoured car.”
That piece of information unsettled Maikahon Karo but never being the one to give up he said, “Ok, we will find another way but be sure of one thing. Card reader or no card reader we are going to win this election.”