2019 Polls: INEC Raises Alarm Over Plot To Hack Into Its Website

Emmanuel AmudaJanuary 8, 2019

0 3 minutes read

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has described as futile effort, any attempt by politicians to hack into its website to compromise the card readers.

Just as the commission said over 84. 04 million Nigerians will vote in this year’s general elections.

INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, at the first quarterly meeting with registered political parties for this year, alerted the nation of a new method of vote buying devised by politicians.

He disclosed that “some partisan actors” were now going round buying up permanent voters cards (PVCs) from voters or financially inducing them to collect the Voter Identification Numbers (VIN) on their PVCs.

“By collecting the VINs, they may be acting on the mistaken notion that our system can be hacked into and the card readers somehow preloaded ahead of election and compromised.

“We want to reassure Nigerians that we are aware of the new tricks. It is a futile effort,” he said.

Prof. Yakubu noted that in some instances, telephone numbers and details of bank accounts of voters were collected, adding that the intention was to induce voters by electronic transfer of funds to their accounts since it will be difficult to buy votes at polling units.

He, however, disclosed that the commission has adopted measures to discourage vote buying, including altering the configuration of its polling units by moving the ballot boxes closer to the voting cubicles in order to make it difficult for voters to expose their marked ballot papers.

“Secondly, we have introduced a partial ban on the use of mobile phone and other photographic devices by voters while in the voting cubicles.

“Thirdly, we are introducing the rolling and flattening of ballot papers by voters before casting them into the ballot boxes,” he added.

Prof. Yakubu said the 84.04 million voters was arrived at after carrying out automated fingerprint identification system (AFIS) on persons who registered during the continuous voter registration (CVR) exercise.

According to him, out of this figure, Lagos State accounted for 6.6 million while Kano has 5.5 million voters.

In 2015, Lagos and Kano States recorded 5.8 million and 5.0 million respectively.

The analysis of the voter register further showed that North West has the highest number of registered voters with over 20.2 million. This was followed by South West with 16.3 million voters.

The South East has the least with slightly over 10 million voters. North East recorded 11.3 million; North Central, 13.4 million; and South-South, 12.9 million.

Further analysis showed that male registrants was 44.4 million while female accounted for 39.6 million voters.

Prof. Yakubu disclosed that INEC has printed and delivered the permanent Voters’ cards (PVCs) to all the states for collection by registered voters, but regretted that millions of cards were still yet to be collected.

He assured that smart card readers would be used to accredit voters for the 2019 Genyeral elections.

“For clarity, I wish to stress that the function of the smart card reader during accreditation is to confirm, verify and authenticate the voter.

“First, it shall be used to confirm that the PVC is genuine and issued by INEC. Cloned cards or cards that do not match the codes for a particular polling unit in which the voter is registered will be rejected by the card readers.

“Secondly, the card readers shall verify that the voter who presents the PVC is the actual owner of the card by ensuring that the personal details on the card reader are consistent with the manual register for the polling unit.

“Thirdly, the card reader shall be used to authenticate the fingerprint of the voter as an additional confirmatory procedure.

“If the fingerprint is not authenticated by the card reader but the PVC is confirmed as genuine and the voter’s personal details are consistent with the manual register, he/she shall be allowed to vote,” Yakubu stated.

He added that the incident form used in previous elections “which is only completed by the presiding officer without the involvement of the voter,” has abolished.

According to him, “where the biometric authentication fails, the voter will be required to thumbprint a box next to his/her picture on the register and to enter his/her mobile telephone number before proceeding to vote.”

He denied that the card reader has been enhanced to recapture voters’ fingerprints at polling units and automatically overwrite the biometric record on the commission’s database.

Prof. Yakubu said there was no change in the number of polling units and voting points used for the 2015 general elections and the 2016 Area Council elections in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).