• Mint raises fears over ballot papers
The Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Plc (NSPM) has raised the alarm that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) will throw the country into a mess as it prepares to print sensitive electoral materials for the conduct of the 2015 general election. MINT, Nigeria’s banknote printer and mint, says that what will be eventually printed as ballot papers by INEC for the conduct of the polls will come without security features if the electoral umpire does not move quickly to correct the mistake it has made in the award of contract for the production of the documents.
Special Adviser to the Central Bank of Nigeria Governor on Mint and former General Manager in the Mint, Prof. Thomas Odoji, in an interview with New Telegraph insisted that the decision by INEC to award the contract for the printing of the ballot papers for the 2015 elections to a foreign company was wrong and would likely generate crisis.
According to him, INEC presently as it is, has failed to properly take care of the issue of securing features and will end up having documents that are not full proof, making the job of counterfeiters easy. “There is nothing in the paper because it is a commercial paper which everybody can buy off the shelf, so anybody can buy it and reproduce,” he said. He added that: “There is no feature which INEC can read and say this is our ballot paper. So, there is nothing from the issuing authority that look, this is our document. In case you have to go to court, they will not be able to defend it.
So, the whole thing is that there is problem in it. It is a total mess that they are trying to put together as a ballot paper.” Our correspondent gathered that under the plan for the printing of the ballots by the commission, materials for the presidential and governorship election slated for February next year would strictly be handled by a United Kingdom based minting firm. About N6 billion is said to have been budgeted for this segment of the contract.
Investigation also revealed that the commission has set aside the sum of N3 billion to be paid to local printers including the MINT to produce the ballot papers that will be used for the National Assembly and House of Assembly elections next year. On the whole, INEC is expected to spend N9 billion for the printing of ballot papers for the five set of elections, which the electoral body has decided to stagger because of its claim that it does not have adequate logistics to run it simultaneously. While querying the rationale behind the award of a large chunk of the ballot printing contract to a foreign firm, Odoji confirmed that INEC did not even follow due process in awarding the contract. “It is faulty.
They did not allow us to quote, they gave it out at a parity, the same price with every other person. At the end of the day, they gave us lower. When they were doing request for quotation, we were not even invited. But they gave the job because Nigerians were shouting that you can’t take all the jobs abroad, foreign exchange is not there, yet they are taking millions of dollars abroad just to print paper and there is no added value to that ballot paper. They are taking jobs to foreigners not Nigerians,” he stressed.
Odoji also said that he could not understand why INEC had to award the contract to a foreign company in the first place through a third party arrangement. “You have to tell INEC to say why they did that. One can say without enough evidence that it all leads around kickbacks but I have no evidence to say that,” he said. He expressed fears that the timing for the award of the contract itself was also wrong considering the short period between now and when the elections will take place. “When did they give them the contract?
Have they paid any money for them to commit themselves in procuring the materials? My fear is that the election issue with the ballot papers may be aborted because without you paying down a reasonable amount of money, the foreigners will never go to the print.
“What about the timing? Look at the election, it is 14th, look at the holidays. Many of them will resume between 12th and 14th of January. It is going to be a nightmare for them. I won’t advise the management of the NSPM to appeal against the award, they have done it in their wisdom, but what we believe is that the contract is wrong,” Udoji noted. New Telegraph gathered that foreign security printing companies who have over 200 years in printing ballot papers would require not less than three months to print complex ballot papers for the kind of elections that Nigeria prepares to hold next year.
The papers for instance would be very diverse, as special ballot papers, duly numbered and would be needed for each of the senatorial, House of Representatives, Houses of Assembly, governorship and presidential elections all over the country. President Goodluck Jonathan in August this year had directed that “we cannot give approval for any printing whether passport or anything except the Mint say they cannot produce that. As far as Mint can produce it, we must produce everything in this country.”
The president while making case for the MINT in handling the printing of electoral materials for INEC in future elections said: “In fact when I appointed the new CBN governor, I told him that the Nigerian Security and Minting Company must be reformed. The board must look into management and get choice global players who are into this business and partner with them.”
President Jonathan had noted that those who would use these services must have their credibility to protect, saying “that means Mint must be in a position to tell INEC Chairman that whatever I give you, the security devices are okay and you will get the result you want.”
Chief Press Secretary to INEC chairman, Mr. Kayode idowu, told New Telegraph that the electoral body followed due process in the award of the contract. Idowu said: “As for due process, contracts of this nature are never awarded at INEC’s sole instance. They are taken through the full complement of statutory due process procedures in government.”
Source: New Telegraph
