How INEC Bungled the Elections, By An Insider!

President Goodluck Jonathan

By Nduka Nwosu and Onyebuchi Ezeigbo

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) might have shot itself in the foot by not undertaking the printing of election materials well on time.

A Nigerian contractor to the commission, Mr. Joseph Waya,  gave an account of how the late timing of contract awards for the production of sensitive election materials contributed to last Saturday's embarrassing cancellation of the National Assembly elections. 

Waya said many insiders at INEC knew it would be impossible for the commission to meet the deadline of delivery of the materials and be able to conduct the elections as scheduled.

"We were expecting it. It is on record that six months ago, INEC was forewarned about the impending consequences of failing to do the right thing on time. We saw it coming six months ago that Nigerians will witness the biggest shock of their lives.  For some of us, it didn’t come as a surprise at all, something we saw coming six months ago but Nigerians were not looking towards that way," he said.

Waya explained that part of the problems INEC was having was that it did not commence the award of contracts for the ballot papers and other election materials on time.

He said even when the commission eventually gave out the contracts, it still could not follow it up with the appropriate placement order letters which meant that the manufacturers became handicapped in accessing funds for the job.

"We wanted INEC to commence factory inspection for companies seeking for the contract to print sensitive election materials but the authorities of the commission kept postponing the visit till December 26.  At that time most manufacturing companies had closed down for the Christmas holidays; everywhere you went in Europe, everybody was on holiday," he explained.

He said INEC was alerted early enough to place orders in good time for the printing of the election materials based on the advice of the manufacturers that it would take a minimum of four weeks for them to be able to get the materials ready for the elections.

"The capacity to get it done and done right was not there, whether it was deliberate, or whether it was in the nature of the INEC Chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega, not to organise things properly, I don’t know. As far back as October and November, we told INEC that it was running late and that for you to print sensitive electoral materials outside this country where you don’t have any control of events, you must give enough time for the manufacturer, and he said there was no problem, that he would award the contracts on time.

"First we received letters for factory inspection on 8th December; on 8th December they said it was not possible that it would be December 16, which he again shifted to December 26, at a time people were enjoying their holidays. We advised him against it because of a likely hitch but he insisted on his own timing, and  we went ahead to do an inspection involving well over 50 factories in Europe after persuading our partners at grave inconvenience to them. They called their staff back from holidays to open their factories so that the INEC delegation could inspect their facility for the printing of these sensitive materials," he said.

According to Waya, some of the problems that lay on the way of getting the election materials with speed was the inability of the manufacturers to source for paper to handle such a large amount of election materials needed by INEC.
He said another problem that was being envisaged was that of availability of aircraft to convey the printed materials to Nigeria.

"We tried to put pressure on INEC to place orders for the job but it was to no avail,” he said.

According to Waya, 50 companies made the bidding for the INEC job and were screened while inspection visits were also carried out on their factories abroad to ascertain their capabilities.

He said to his utter disbelief, most of the companies that under-went the screening and factory inspection exercise were side-lined by INEC while two foreign companies - the Royal Mint of Spain and another in Italy - that were not part of the bidding, surprisingly booked their way to grab the job.  

He alleged that a clique in INEC took it upon itself to handpick those it wanted to do the job without recourse to the report submitted by its commissioners who inspected the factories.

“A clique within INEC just sat and handpicked those they wanted.  Their action was not based on the capacity of the companies to deliver,” he said.

Another issue Waya said led to the eventual failure to produce election materials on schedule was the inability of INEC to mobilise the companies who got the job to encourage them to swing into action immediately. He said although, most of these firms had access to credits by banks, they could not get the needed placement orders on time to process the letters of credit.
“INEC only sent out orders for the printing job three weeks ago. As at March 7, the commission had not issued orders for the job.
"We have two big problems, one was to source for paper, the paper for the printing of the election materials needed to be manufactured, you do not have security papers on ground except you place an order for them and the manufactures will now go and start the process of printing them; the minimum delivery time is usually four weeks for the plain paper. We advised on the need to book for our orders on time and the manufacturers told us to make sure that our orders arrived at least before the end of January," he said.

He said the reason was that in Europe now, there was rationing of papers, so no one company could produce anything more than 20 million of such requisitions. Waya said the second problem had to do with renting of aircraft to airlift the material to Nigeria, because the quantity of materials required by Nigeria for this election was in excess of 500 million ballot papers, He revealed that the commission had to award contract for the printing of 150 million ballot papers meant for the presidential elections and the run-off elections to the Spanish mint  and Italian outfit.

He said his company, which was involved in the bidding exercise, and its foreign partner, Alusset based in Dublin, Ireland, took part in the screening and factory inspection were not given the job.

INEC sources who corroborated Waya's statement said the Spanish company bungled the job by printing the materials for the presidential run-off first instead of the main presidential election.

Not only that, the source explained that these companies came back to INEC only last week to say they would not be able to print the 75 million ballot papers for the presidential election, thereby paving the way for the job to be awarded to another firm, Graphic Inline.

All the pleadings by most of the contractors who passed through the screening that the returned job be given to them to execute was rejected but instead the commission decided to re-award it to the Italian firm, Graphic Inline, the source added.

Media Assistant to Jega, Mr. Kayode Idowu, in response to Waya's claims said he had no proof who Waya was and that all he could say was that  INEC had gone past the "voodoo claims" of certain people regarding what was happening at the commission.

"All I can tell you now is that the company involved in whatever Waya is talking about is certainly not a Spanish company. You can quote me on that. This is an old story. Our concern now is to get the elections underway," he said.