Nigerians’ well-expressed frustration with spending trillions of Naira annually to run barely functional, but supposedly hi-tech institutions, appeared to manifest full-scale Wednesday after top government satellite body, NIGCOMSAT, failed for days to install a functional electronic platform for lawmakers voting on the constitution.
The multi-million Naira project flopped first on Tuesday, forcing a reschedule of the constitution amendment vote at the House of Representatives, and finally on Wednesday, plunging the chamber into a laborious manual voting that ended shortly before 11p.m.
How the Nigerian Communication Satellite body, an office expected to deal with utilising Nigeria’s satellite functions on broadband internet, tele-education and medicine, marine communication, and navigation services, got into a contract for a direct electronic voting machine installation is not clear.
What was clear however, was each of the 360 members received a new computer tablet and several new routers were purchased for the failed exercise.At an average N100, 000 per tablet, that would amount to at least N36 million, exclusive of other spending such as the internet routers and logistics.
Indication of a malfunction emerged Tuesday after members met for unusually long hours behind closed doors as they apparently waited to deal with the wobbling infrastructure. It is not also clear why the technical handlers of the machine, expected to be the same used by the Senate for their vote last week, were not called up.
As the lawmakers opened finally for business on Tuesday, it turned out it was NIGCOMSAT that was in charge of setting up an improvised system for the voting.The Director General of the Agency, Ahmed Rufai, apologised to the lawmakers on Tuesday after it failed to go through, urging patience and assuring the service will be functional by Wednesday.
Mr. Rufai said technicians were to work round the night to fix the problem, and counselled members to fully charge their new tablets for the next day.But the delay continued on Wednesday, and for hours voting failed to start, again drawing apologies from the DG, and a dim pledge to “give up” if the last try failed.
Indeed, that attempt failed forcing the House to commence manual voting that required each member to mark their preferences to 85 clauses, signed them while collation followed.Collation ended minutes before 11 p.m. Wednesday.
Nigeria! I hail thee
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