Nigeria: Concern Mounts Over Presidential Polls

Chinedu Eze

3 April 2011

As the postponement of the National Assembly poll to Monday is beginning to sink in, investigations have revealed that the logistics nightmare the Independent National Electoral Commission has grappled with to make electoral materials available nationwide for the federal legislative poll, is just the tip of the iceberg.

The commission, THISDAY checks revealed, could encounter even bigger difficulties ensuring that the ballot papers and materials for the presidential election are ready and distributed all over the country before the presidential poll next Saturday.

The irony is that whilst INEC officials are losing sleep over the non-availability of materials for the presidential poll, the commission has already printed and warehoused ballot papers for the presidential run-off poll perhaps in anticipation that no clear victor emerges from the presidential election on Saturday.

Sources close to the commission confirmed that the ballot papers for the presidential election are yet to be air freighted to Nigeria, even though electoral materials for the run-off are available and on standby.

It is not even clear if they have been printed, as the contract for the printing of presidential ballot papers were only reawarded last week.

According to the sources, the original printers contracted by INEC to handle the contract for the production and supply of the ballot papers had actually forewarned INEC that the presidential ballot papers would not be ready for the April 9 presidential election.

“We were surprised when the commission received a report from the company that the presidential ballot papers would not be ready till April 12, and, as you know, the presidential election is slated for April 9.

“INEC had to cancel the contract and reawarded it last Friday, April 1, to another company that has promised delivery of the presidential ballot papers between April 4 and 7,” the source said.

But even the new dates for delivery given by the new contractor is no guarantee that INEC will get its material on time before the poll, explained the source.

“If the commission encounters the same problems getting cargo planes to deliver them on time, we would face the same scenario as the National Assembly poll, and even if the material gets in on time, there’s still no guarantee that INEC can distribute to all the nooks and crannies for the presidential poll,” explained one source conversant with the contracts.

According to THISDAY checks, the new company, V.I. Solutions, belongs to a Nigerian, Alhaji Yahaya Musa.

V.I. Solution is one of 11 companies that were awarded the contract to print the ballot papers and the result sheets for the National Assembly poll.

Also, investigation into the production of electoral material for the National Assembly poll has shown that the result sheets, which were not available in most of the polling units nationwide, and the non-availability of which was one of the main reasons for the postponement of the election, were printed in Germany by a company know as Sanfrano which has another Nigerian backer, Alhaji Sani Musa.

Like V.I. Solution, Sanfrano is one of 11 companies that were awarded the contract for the printing of ballot papers and the result sheets.

It was gathered that the company air freighted the result sheets into the country in the early hours of Saturday morning in over ten air cargo planes.

In addition to worrying over how to distribute the material, the commission is currently battling how best to secure the custody of the sensitive electoral materials already in the public domain from the botched poll of yesterday.

A senior INEC official that spoke to THISDAY said that the commission is worried sick over the sensitive materials already in the custody of polling officials in some states and the goal by INEC to keep such materials secure has been defeated by the postponement of the election.

The source said: “In our series of meetings with the political parties, they made requests to have samples and serial numberings of the ballot papers but we refused.

“Now our joker is out of the pack and is now in the possession of some politicians.

“It is our fear that in some states where sensitive materials like the result sheets and ballot papers are in the hands of the polling officials, any thing could happen.

“Our biggest problem at the moment is how to retrieve these materials from the polling officials and return them to the warehouses of INEC without making mistakes,” the official said.

According to the official, “The ballot papers’ serial numbers and the result sheets are now public knowledge and your bet is as good as mine, knowing fully well, the Nigerian politician. How are we sure that the ballot papers will not find their way to some private printing companies?”

Further findings reveal that INEC or its contractors may have failed to charter sufficient cargo aircraft to bring in the electoral materials from Johannesburg, South Africa, where they are being printed.

A senior official of one of the ground handling companies made this known yesterday, adding that there is also the possibility that the company printing the materials for INEC may not have completed the job before election started on Saturday or failed to close the aircraft charter deal on time to get sufficient planes that would bring in the materials.

The cargo planes bringing the materials are being handled by the two known aviation handling companies in Nigeria, Skyway Aviation Handling Company Limited and Nigeria Aviation Handling Company Plc.

According to the spokesman of SAHCOL, Basil Agboarumi, the company had handled five flights since Thursday when INEC started bringing the materials to the country, while NAHCO said that it has handled only nine tones of the cargo.

AllAfrica – All the Time