Planning for electronic rigging

This is all the more important since Iwu is again back with the Indian manufacturers and probably the same persons. On invitation, pre-arranged of course, they where on the floor of the Conference to display their wares when debate on the issue was at centre stage. To test its efficacy, several delegates “voted”; some voted […]

This is all the more important since Iwu is again back with the Indian manufacturers and probably the same persons. On invitation, pre-arranged of course, they where on the floor of the Conference to display their wares when debate on the issue was at centre stage.

To test its efficacy, several delegates “voted”; some voted numerous times.  To their surprise, the Indian machines never detected the multiple  voting!

Knowing how rigging has been perfected as an enduring culture of our democracy, using this machine would therefore finally nail our hope for free and fair elections.  If it is the same make that Iwu has been up and down marketing, of recent, the simple thing to do is to order him to pack them back to Delhi, where their enviable and superior electoral culture could easily accommodate them. Here, however, they are unfit for our democratic market with so much value not attached to its rules of conduct.

After the Indian display, I draw attention to the case of a Nigerian engineer, Sani Aminu from Zamfara State, who had written the Conference seeking permission to display his own mechanical, not electronic, machine. He was invited.

The brand doesn’t use fuel or batteries. Notwithstanding, we went into rigging tricks, manipulations, etc. We rigged, rigged and rigged, but could not rig despite several attempts.

After our failure to rig with the Sani machine, the Conference gave him a resounding standing ovation, the first and only time it did so. Goodwill came pouring forth, with representatives of various engineering associations, the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria and many more promising to help. His was by far cheaper, easier to operate and maintain than that of the Indians.

Engineer Sani, a man of medium height, must have felt taller on the floor as he savoured the ovation, claps, goodwill and all. He made everyone proud.

Alas, he wasn’t/isn’t in the books. And what is more, the managers of our nation do not want a system that is water- tight against rigging. Let me explain.

Soon after the display of the Sani machine, someone came calling in my hotel room and narrated to me his encounter with a powerful political personality whom he visited to market his own voting machine, hoping that through him government would patronize him. He had hoped that with the man’s influence in government, and very sure of the efficacy of his machine, the gentleman would go for it.

He was wrong. According to him, he took time to explain in details the efficacy of the machine. Thereafter, the man asked him thus: “Are you sure that no rigging could take place with the machine?” Proudly, he responded that it was impossible to do so. Contrary to his expectation, the response was very curt: “Then, my son, we don’t need it. It is of no use to us.” That was the end of the matter.

Simple meaning: any system that could stop rigging is not wanted by Nigeria’s political managers because rigging is the life wire of their so-called victories. At least in most cases. Without in the least meaning much, we must wonder why Iwu returned to India without even the courtesy of inviting Engineer Sani Aminu whose mechanical voting machine, as tested on the floor of  the 2005 National Political Reform Conference, proved reliable. It speaks volumes.