INEC buys 20,000 extra card readers

The Independent National Electoral Commission has confirmed the procurement of about 20,000 backup card readers and 35,000 backup batteries as part of measures to tackle possible challenges during the accreditation and election exercise scheduled to hold on March 28 and April 11.

Recently-held elections in countries like Cameroon, Ghana, Mali, Cote D’Ivoire, Uganda, Bolivia, Venezuela, Guatemala and Colombia, which made use of similar biometric technologies, were marred with challenges like data manipulation, poor mobile networks, and breakdown of card readers.

 In an interview Prof. Attahiru Jega, however, said with the procurement of backup devices, among other precautionary measures, it would limit the challenges...

that may arise during the election exercise.

He said, “We have learnt specifically from Ghana’s experience that with regard to the design of the card readers, there could be battery problems. As a result, some of those card readers could not function and thus, elections had to be rescheduled to the following week because the (political parties) and the commission agreed that there would be no voting without accreditation. In Nigeria, we have also taken all that into account.

“The first of the three plans is that for each card reader, we have backup batteries. In Ghana, it was batteries that failed. The design of the card reader is such that the battery, when in continuous use, would last 12 hours. But accreditation is for five hours. So, if the battery is fully charged, there is no way you can exhaust the battery capacity. Despite that, we have spare batteries; more than 35,000 batteries have been procured so that if, for whatever reason, there may be a challenge with the battery, one can replace it.

“We also have spare card readers, in case the problem is the entire device. That aside, we have done integrity tests, several of which were carried out in Texas, us, showing that they don’t fail easily and that they are of the highest quality. In spite of that, we have bought nearly 20,000 spares, in addition to 152,000 active card readers, so that if for any reason the card reader malfunctions and can no longer continue, the spares would be deployed at the wards for the exercise.”

Source...PunchNG