DDC machines: Oji-Alala urges for patient with technology

Former President of the Nigeria Computer Society (NCS), Deacon Ojinta Oji-Alala has urged Nigerians to be patient with the technologies deployed for the on-going voters’ registration.

Oji-Alala, made this call in Lagos while speaking to newsmen, saying that technology driven processes require practice and experience to get it right.

While reviewing the current voters’ registration exercise, Oji-Alala said that he was confident that it would succeed but required the public, the governments and the officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to remain focused on the objectives of achieving a free and fair election through the exploration of modern technology.

Also, the former NCS boss noted that the public must show resilience through maturity, patience and effective participation.

As said by him, the finger printing process has become a challenge and the way to get about it is for the INEC officials to follow strictly the guidelines provided by INEC and the equipment manufacturers.

He equally said that excessive dirt, sweat and grease might affect the effectiveness of the scanners.

“Everyone who goes for scanning must ensure that the fingers are dirt free,” he declared.

Oji-Alala further urged the INEC operatives to ensure that the scanners are always placed on a flat surface while scanning and should never be cleaned with chemicals as this will damage it. For him, he is aware that INEC calibrated her software to achieve high quality finger print and this may cause slow scanning.

Additionally, he said that there is nothing wrong with the actual Direct Data Capturing (DDC) hardware, either the laptops produced by Zinox or the printers from Hewlett Packard (HP).

He explained that Zinox being an indigenous computer manufacturer deserves commendation for supplying 80,000 out of the 94,000 DDC machines that INEC has so far deployed in this exercise.

Oji-Alala emphasised that it is natural at this point for Nigerians to blame even software problems on the hardware branded Zinox.

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