September 30, 2000
In his speech to the 5th Pan-Yoruba National Congress on September 28, 2000, the Leader of the Yoruba, Chief Abraham Adesanya raised the bar by declaring that the Yoruba will (should?) not take part in any upcoming elections, certainly not in Year 2003, unless the National ID card system is implemented.
Ostensibly, this will be because it will tremendously remove the issue of rigging through the counting of "cattle and goats." See story in Vanguard
I beg to differ over the importance of this National ID issue with regards to elections.
Certainly, it is most important for planning and for security checks (as in credit, banking, purchases, etc.), but not really for elections. I will explain.
What are needed for elections, in the absence of desirable automated technology, are INDEPENDENT ELECTION MONITORS at each polling booth, to ensure
- that THE TOTAL VOTERS sighted and the TOTAL VOTES returned at each spot tally;
- as much as possible, the PRELIMINARY RESULTS are announced on site for every one to hear and verify; and
- most importantly, THE VOTES ANNOUNCED and THE VOTES TALLIED are the same.
None of these are aided by National ID cards, which merely ensure that THE PERSON VOTING is the same as THE PERSON the electoral register says he or she is.
But if people who don't show up at all are counted, or if the actual votes of some people are substituted for another - after all, that is what we mean by rigging, is it not? - what is the use of National ID cards in elections?
Don't you see that we could still use ID cards, have people vote, but then give all the votes to one person or the other?
If at an election booth, 60 properly identified people vote, 20 for candidate A and 40 for candidate B, and it is announced as such on site, but the INEC insist that Candidate A won with 40 votes and candidate B with 20 votes, what use are ID cards?
Let us think about that.
So I will admit that threatening a boycott over the National ID card issue is a pressure tactic, but it could backfire if in fact there is great discourse to show that ID's will not achieve the effect for which the boycott is being effected. There will then just be egg on our faces.
I am also worried about the implementation of the ID card project itself.
First, we must ask ourselves: how many nations in the world have NATIONAL IDs? Those who don't, why not, and what LOCALLY-issued IDs, which are then accepted NATIONWIDE, do they use?
Those who do, what are the advantages and disadvantages, and what have we learnt from them?
One would presume that these questions have been asked in Nigeria, but I can bet you that
the idea of money being made from the idea itself may have been more paramount than the soundness of the idea. That is why it has been delayed this long!
To be frank, to want to card 100 million people at or around the same time - and I presume we are talking about PHOTO-ID - is too cumbersome and costly.
First, people NEED to be convinced that this enterprise is to their benefit, and that not having an ID card is to their SUBSTANTIAL loss.
Put in another way, if nobody asks me ANYWHERE about my ID - take some illiterate person living in some deep forest village without water or electricity - why issue me an ID card simply for the heck of it?
So we should first of all concentrate only on those who are IN THE OFFICIAL SYSTEM in some way - newly-born infants, students at all levels, workers (govt. and public-sector), users of banks, hospitals and other government services, and owners of businesses and vehicles. It must be that they require these IDs to actually obtain services, not simply because the government wants them to have an ID card.
How do we issue these cards or determine what number goes on them? I envisage two cards - SINCs and NICs. Somehow, many people already have CERTAIN OFFICIAL NUMBERS which can be ADOPTED right away as their SOCIAL IDENTIFICATION NUMBERS (SINs), say twelve digits, with name and number to be put on a Social Identification Number Card (SINC) - after expansion or dimunition of certain digits of these numbers that they are already using, and coding them based on certain formulas, by state, by institution, etc. These people can then use those numbers the rest of their lives.
Churches, mosques, NGOs as well as government offices could be tapped on to help in issuing these SINs to those who so request them, which need not have pictures on them.
Now the second card, NATIONAL IDENTIFICATION CARDS (NICs) should have pictures on them, for use where a face and a name need to go together, e.g. as in elections or in banks or for credit checks, etc.. Again, it should be on a voluntary basis, paid for by the recipient, issued by
government-approved agencies that need not be government offices per se.
Finally, SINCs and NICs will be totally ineffective if we don't have a readily accessible electronic database that will compare and sieve these names and numbers to ensure that one person does not have 36 SINCs and NICs! Otherwise, we will solve one set of problems, and create another!
So by all means, let us require NICs to vote, but that is not necessarily the cure-all for election rigging.
Guides
