Mike Igini is the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in Edo State. He was redeployed from Cross Rivers State. In this interview, he insists that the INEC is ready to conduct the forthcoming polls, adding that the introduction of card readers will eliminate fraud, just as he urges politicians plotting to rig the election to concentrate on how to convince the electorate as they will be disappointed.
He asks supporters of President Goodluck Jonathan and those of Gen.Buhari to obey the peace plan which they signed both in words and in their actions. Excerpts: It seems you came to Edo with a magic wand as regards the distribution of PVCs to voters, what is the magic. I did not come with any particular magic wand, except the power of information. My colleague and predecessor and the staff here did a good job. I am building on what he did through another strategy, mainly anchored on information dissemination and dissuading those who snatched PVCs to stop doing so because it would be useless and unhelpful.
Such action, apart from being criminal under the laws, is also redundant given the fact that all PVCs will be useless without the presence of the owner of the card when used with the proposed card Readers. I’m aware of the thinking of some members of the political class based on the misconception that the elections will be conducted in the old way of turf wars despite the changes since the 2011 elections under the current leadership of INEC. We have been deconstructing that perception and have made it very clear that the game has changed and the rules have also changed.
If you play a new game with old rules, you will find yourself panting outside the field with your outdated ways as a burden to your aspiration. We have simply informed stakeholders that this election will empower the voter in a way that no election before in Nigeria has ever done, and that what they must concentrate on is the electorate from whom help and electoral victory cometh, hence they should do more than ever before to please them. Clearly, the message appears to be resonating so far. Good enough, a number of the stakeholders here have a fair idea about what we stand for when it comes to the issue of free, fair and credible election.
They know that I mean it when I say that every vote will count and every vote counted would be taken into account, in order to sustain the confidence of the people and for our democracy to endure. I have only told the political stakeholders to go back to study the new rules of the game again and adapt to it, because the result of a failure of adaptation is biological and physical extinction. So those who want to remain relevant in the current political ecosystem must be adaptive to INEC’s new electoral ecology of “no-PVC-and-card-reader no-voting”. Before your coming to Edo, hoodlums carted away thousands of PVCs and we learnt they called to inform you of plans to return them. What is the situation today? That is true, but our daily and sustained public enlightenment that those snatched cards would not be usable, except by those for whom the PVCs were expressly produced, had turned the situation around on a good note, as you noted.
Before l came, a total of 4,658 PVCs were snatched from various wards in 9 LGAs of Akoko Edo, Egor, Esan west, Etsako West, Oredo, Ovia North-east, Owan-east, Uhunmwode out of which Orhionwon alone recorded 2,052. However, I made it very clear to all that the permanent voter cards (PVCs) in their possession were like used recharge-cards. They are useless to them without the proper card-reader at the correct polling unit. In fact, PVC is only a sensitive or security material if it is in the possession of the true bearer, but useless in the absence of the owner whose biometrics each card bears. I’ve told stakeholders here to show the futility of being in possession of someone else’s PVC that I could even dump all the cards at Ramat Park or take them to the Ring Road , the center of town, that except individuals go to pick their own cards, they will all be useless to you. Since then, a few unknown people have contacted me by phone, expressing willingness to return these cards that I consider borrowed for admiration. I say they borrowed them to admire them because it is biometrically tailored to work for only the owner. Holding it is like carrying someone’s debit card which without the pin number is just a piece of plastic.
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