 Published
August 28th, 2011
There are different views of the assertion
that Nigeria’s standard of governance should never be
compared with that of the United States of America (USA).
The reason people give is that USA’s governance has evolved
over 235 years while Nigeria’s is only 50 years. One of the
nastiest lines of thought is that there is a misconception
here which is being brought before President Jonathan and
his team of advisers in order for them to correct this myth
and begin to address fundamental issues in Nigeria.
Democracy is not a patent of USA (father of democracy) that
forbids copying. It’s free to any nation that needs it at
any time. If it were a patent, then Nigerians would be
thinking of developing theirs which could take centuries.
This is not the case. All that is required of Nigerians is
to photocopy. President Obama and the USA Congress would be
happy if Nigerians are able to govern themselves without
rancor. Of course this would save the United States some
dollars in this era of global economic meltdown. What is not
required is to spend decades on the drawing board to
orchestrate a strategy of governance. From this perspective
therefore, it’s imperative for President Jonathan to advance
the journey of democracy for Nigeria by copying from USA.
Because he is the most educated President Nigeria has ever
produced, it’s believed he has all it takes to implement the
idea in this piece—to place an identity on every Nigerian.
Not only would finger print identification curb election
rigging, but also assist investigation of crimes. Moreover,
the identity of Nigerians is a national issue and should
never be a State affair. Indeed any identification project
without the 10 finger prints is useless. As one American
foreign policy analyst put it after World War 1, “since
America was unwilling to use its power that power, for
purposes of foreign policy, did not really exist.” President
Jonathan’s parents/community that sent him to school, the
Institution that awarded him a Doctorate degree would be
proud to see Mr. President put his vast knowledge to use
after an election landslide victory in April 2011.
World leaders gave President Jonathan a pass mark for the
last election, but the reality is, though it was a step
forward, the foundation laid is not solid enough to
guarantee the success of future elections because of the
mindset of this present generation. The root of election
rigging is that Nigerians don’t have identity; hence
governance is extremely difficult to any expert that may
want to exhibit his positive management skills. As energy is
to economy, that is how election is to governance; hence
this matter should be addressed with all the fiber in the
president.
Mr. President, please place identity on all Nigerians
whether at home or abroad through finger-printing, and at
the point of finger printing, identification (I.D.) number
is assigned. It’s this I.D. number that can be cross-check
against the thumb print when contesting an election
malpractice(s). The caveat here is that because this project
has multiple benefits, it’s expected that there would be
attempts to frustrate your efforts, but you should be seen
as an embodiment of courage to complete this project at
least six months before the end of your first term. This
way, you’re still able to deal with any hiccups that would
arise during the exercise that shouldn’t last more than 90
days. Your domain has 774 local governments with a
population estimated at 140 million. With this data in mind,
there would be 181 thousand per local government on average.
As such, with 2010 entries per day, this exercise would be
completed in 90 days if 126 persons, mostly youth corpers
are assigned to each local government on 8 hours per day
job. It doesn’t really matter if corpers from even the same
region are used because finger-prints differ from person to
person. Therefore, any duplication is easy to detect. This
is to say that each person would assist people to fill a
computer form, ( full names, address, names of children, and
date of birth of each person), input this information into
the computer for 27 minutes and take the finger print of all
10 fingers in 3 minutes, total 30 minutes. Officers handling
this job must ensure that the finger printing and data
collection are done simultaneously keeping in mind that the
finger printing is most important in this exercise. The
electronic finger-printing is desirable (3 electronic
scanners per local govt) because of the level of illiteracy
and distrust in the society. However, each local government
should have one manual finger-print equipment which a team
of 3 senior persons can use to take finger-prints of those
in hospitals and other places of disabilities within these
90 days. An example of the software is Oracle special
security program which can be found easily in California,
USA.
The journey of democracy begins with elections at all
levels. Truth be told. It’s absolute nonsense when court
Judges declare winners of election as it has happened on
many instances in Nigeria of today. First, that is not the
role of Judiciary in a democracy. Second, most Judges eat
bribe; as such, they are not better than the armed
robbers/assassins operating in Nigeria. The basis on which
the Judges establish their decisions are inappropriate
because they only look into the ceilings of the court room
where there are no facts of election rigging and reach
bizarre decision(s) in favor of the highest bidder. How do
you establish real election misconduct when there are no
data on file to cross-check who voted ten times and all the
fraud that are executed at midnight during election days?
Where there is no data, the situation is as good as the
blind leading the blind. Upon completion of the identity
project, the scanning machines and computers would be
distributed to each local government office ( to register
births/deaths), local government Police offices and each
State judiciary headquarters. Nigerians would recall that
there was a case of identity that went as far as the Supreme
Court. If every convicted person were finger printed, it
would have been very easy to settle that case. But because
the system didn’t have finger printing in place, it’s
obvious that so many wrong things took place during that
trial. Nigerians should be able to copy/procure technology
from developed countries so as to make life comfortable for
its citizens. If this project is not started and completed
within the next 40 months, then when? Indeed, any
identification project without finger printing should be
stopped forthwith because it would amount to a complete
waste of State and Federal resources. Is the forensic
analyst really effective without data on file in terms of
biometric authentication?
With combined teams of the armed forces, it’s easy to secure
the nation borders within these 90 days to avoid intrusion.
For avoidance of doubt and the effectiveness of this
project, this writer opines that commanders from the East
are to secure northern borders while northern commanders
secure the western borders and no team should be on the same
post for more than a week at a stretch. The safety of this
data can be done by the controlling office in Abuja and each
local government storing them in CDs which are easy to keep.
Because the Mr. President has promised to take Nigeria to a
higher level, this is one vital area that would lunch the
country into proper governance. On average, Nigerians have
done well as individuals when compared with the people from
the rest of the globe. But as a group, Nigeria cannot be
reckoned with in the comity of nations because very simple
issues such as identifying Nigerians which would reduce
fraud/malpractices are ignored. Nigeria must begin to walk
on the right path of progress by putting basic systems in
place.
Tosan Okotie
Lives in Texas, USA |
