By Chigozie Effe
When the former Vice Chancellor of Bayero University Kano, Prof. Atttahiru Jega, was appointed by the Goodluck Jonathan administration as the country’s electoral umpire for the 2011 general elections, many observers within and outside the country, saw it as putting a round peg in a round hole. He was a perfect man for the job, so it seems. Undoubtedly, Jega has made history as the first electoral umpire to conduct elections in the country back to back.
Even though the 2011 elections was marred with hiccups and violence, but then, Jega learned on the job and improved upon it, much more than his predecessors in the subsequent elections held in different parts of the country. That earned him international recognition as the world beamed it searchlight on Nigeria because the reasons are quite obvious.
The just concluded elections in the country, having been predicted by doomsday prophets to be catastrophic, turned out the most credible election in Nigeria’s history. This further laid credence to Jega as an incorruptible electoral umpire and has equally set the template for his successor.
Unlike his predecessors, Jega’s sense of patriotism and maturity made all the difference towards ensuring that the country witnessed free and fair elections especially the melodrama that played out at the collation centre in Abuja.
For example, the attitudinal dispositions of one of the PDP stalwarts at the coalition centre and one time Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Mr. Godsday Orubebe, which ordinarily would have caused commotion and probably set the country ablaze, was carefully handled by Jega; an act he was widely commended for.
Orubebe, in a most uncivilized manner, had contested the results, having seen that his party would not win the presidential election, decided to whip up sentiment which didn’t yield result as Jega made nonsense of the outburst by applying wisdom.
One of the techniques introduced by Jega that worked in his favour was the use of the card reader, a cutting edge technology. Jega, who stressed that the process will help address concerns about the alteration of election figures to fraudulently confer advantage on some candidates to the detriment of others, said no such thing would happen this time around.
Speaking with newsmen in Abuja shortly before the March 28 elections, Jega noted: “This is indeed why they have been attacking me because they know that the card reader machines will help us to address all those irregularities, starting from the accreditation of voters at all the polling units.
“How can they manipulate the election when all the information with regards to the number of voters that turned out at every polling unit is automatically captured and transmitted by the card reader machines?
“We have made rigging impossible for them as there is no how the total number of votes cast at the polling unit could exceed the number of accredited persons. Such discrepancy in figures will be immediately spotted. This technology will further make it impossible for any corrupt electoral officer to connive with any politician to pad-up results.
“To my mind, these are some of the reasons why many of them are opposing the use of the card readers. The crooked ways they used in the past to get away with manipulation of election results have been dealt with. This time, with the card readers, such fraud will be easy to establish.
“We have further made arrangement that all the results coming to local government collation centers will be scanned, transformed to PDF format and uploaded on our website so that anybody can go there and confirm result from his polling unit.
“We believe that this is an added value to our process, it is something that we have not been able to do in the past. Let me also use this opportunity to advise political parties to pay attention to the appointment and accreditation of agents they will deploy at the polling unit level. They should not appoint people without credibility, who can be bought over by other party agents.’’
To an average Nigerian, Jega is a saint that must be commended for a job well done. The elections may have come and gone, but the fact remains that Jega has written his name in gold for this show of exemplary leadership and for a job well done.
