TECHNOLOGY IN ELECTION HAS LED TO LESS TENSION AND CRISIS IN AFRICA – INEC CHAIRMAN

Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu, has advocated the use of technology which enhances efficiency and transparency in the electoral processes in Africa. He however called for caution in the deployment of such technology to avoid manipulation.

 

He made the call yesterday, at The Electoral Institutes 12^th Public Lecture entitled: “ICT and Electronic Voting: Issues And Challenges”.

 

The INEC Chairman, represented by National Commissioner Amina Bala Zakari, recommended that “in order to use technology effectively, you need to have a secure system that cannot be penetrated. It also needs to be simplified so that the users and operators can understand it.”

 

He observed that: “African countries have begun to use technology in the electoral process and it has to led the improvement in the electoral process. It has led to less tension and crisis in elections. We have seen elections in Benin, Niger and Nigeria. The use of technology has gone a long way in making elections acceptable and we have less post election conflicts”.

 

Professor Yakubu pointed out that: “the use of technology in elections is beginning to gather support globally especially in emerging democracies as ours. The use of technology certainly enhances efficiency, transparency in areas of data management and most especially in real time result transmission”.

 

Explaining the importance of the theme of the lecture to the current technological transformation going on in the Nigerian electoral process with the introduction of the Smart Card Reader and push for the amendment of the Electoral Act to accommodate the use of technology, the INEC Chairman said: “if we are not careful in the use of technology, the process can be manipulated so we need to come to a middle ground, and discussions as these will give us an insight into the experiences of other countries where technology have been successfully deployed and it has functioned over the years so that it could aid us in our own electoral process”.

 

Director General of the Institute, Professor Abubakar Momoh, in his welcome remarks, said: “After the 2015 elections, the take away we had from that election was whether electronic voting should be or not be. We believe that it is only through engagements such as this that we can have a very robust basis to begin to take specific actions in our strive to keep improving the electoral process”.

 

 On her part, Chairman of the Board of the Electoral Institute, Amina Bala Zakari, represented by National Commissioner, Prince Soyebi Adedeji, advised that deliberations and outcome of the lecture be transferred to the end users of the innovation, the operators and the field officers of the Commission, as well as the state offices so that the gains of the lecture would not be lost.

 

 She appreciated the timely organization of the lecture with such an important topic to the country’s electoral process. “This cannot come at a better time when the country is beginning to face challenges in the acceptability or otherwise of the electronic voting system,” she said.

 

Chairman of the occasion and Chief Executive Officer of Nigerian Communications Commission, Professor Umar Garba Danbatta, in his remarks, commended the former Chairman of INEC, Professor Attahiru Jega, for his foresight in moving in the direction of increasing the use of technology in order to have free, fair and credible elections by using biometric registration and authentication prior to voting during the 2015 election, which he said, significantly improved the democratic process.

 

The guest lecturer, Dr. Surendra Thakur of the Durban University of Technology, South Africa, recommended a change in legislation to experiment and pilot e-voting. He said: “it is a decision and opportunity to allow the Election Management Body (EMB) carefully gather field and contextual information, without raising expectations related to e-voting”.

 

He explained that the experimentation and observation of such technology would provide important local contextual data when and if such an adoption was made.