The electoral body had yet to announce the results two days after the elections pan-Nigeria as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) battled with the anachronistic process it supervised for the national elections. Even so, citizens shared openly via electronic media the results from polling units and local governments while INEC made a show of “collation centres”. Those centres required their officials travelled thousands of kilometres nationwide to come to the federal capital physically. There were risks of accidents to lives and vehicles, as well as manipulation.
In this part of our review of the 2019 elections, BusinessDay looks at the imperative of electronic voting arising from the failings of the semi-automated system deployed.
The 2019 Nigerian General Elections displayed in stark relief the contradictions of Nigeria. Here is a country with highly developed electronic templates for logistics, data transfer and financial services built on a robust telecommunications network. Citizen data sits on many databases, from national identity to driver’s licence through vehicle registration to the examination bodies that capture that of teens Junior Secondary to Senior Secondary. Yet.
Data capture and transfer in Nigeria is now at par with the rest of the world in significant value-laden areas such as banking, project management and critical healthcare services. Nevertheless, Nigeria prefers to shut down to conduct elections because it insists on deploying outdated manual processes. The cost is high and unsustainable.
The manual process of the elections led to various sad incidents. Agents of the ruling party went berserk across the land, not only snatching ballot boxes but burning them so the votes could not count. There was voter intimidation. Then violence perpetrated by agents or representatives of the state such as the Army.
Others seized and held to ransom party and electoral officials in many states, notably Rivers and Lagos. Citizens named senior officials of the ruling party or the government in various cases of kidnapping of either party or electoral officials.
Nigeria returned to the dark days of electoral violence. It confirmed the importance of leadership and the aphorism that fish gets rotten from the head. The Federal Government and its agencies failed to provide guidance. Neither the Nigerian Police nor the Nigerian Army lived up to expectations as citizens could not see them in action when required. Instead, their traces stood out in areas where wrong actions predominated.
Worse was the fact of impunity and regression. In Lagos, politicians deployed thugs to intimidate voters in strongholds of the PDP. When intimidation failed, they snatched and burnt ballot boxes. INEC officials and police officers lost their lives as did no fewer than 15 citizens.
Worse happened in Lagos with the recourse to ethnic polarisation. The thugs openly asked Igbos, following the prompting of the national leader o the ruling party, to either vote APC or go to their home states to vote PDP. It was shameful. It led to confrontations and the near-lynching of one of the thugs. In consequence, Lagos State now sits on the knife-edge of potential ethnic violence.
The Lagos example is particularly shameful. Lagos is the first place where Nigeria practised democratic elections since 1923. It has always been peaceful and for the most part has avoided this recourse to atavism. To regress to ethnic baiting and intimidation in 2019 is so very sad and deplorable.
Electronic voting would preclude or significantly reduce incidents of thuggery and open intimidation. Citizens can deploy their mobile devices and vote on the mobile platform of INEC. We are doing so already in Nigeria with financial services and e-commerce.
It is important to note on the upside that the limited deployment of electronics in the 2019 elections led to a decrease in the reported numbers for winners and losers. Cases of mass thumb printing reduced, even as it happened. There was also increased turnout and citizen engagement, a plus for Nigeria’s democracy.
All of these were avoidable. President Muhammadu Buhari declined assent regrettably to the legislative review of the Electoral Act 2010. Top of the changes was the approval of electronic voting for the conduct and transmission of results. The bill backed INEC’s resolve to transmit results electronically in an encrypted and secured manner to prevent hacking.
Nations of the world have adopted electronic voting for its numerous advantages. They include faster results that are transparent, secure, accurate and auditable. India, Brazil and the Philippines are among huge population countries that have led in the adoption given the challenges of physical movement in such large geographical spaces.
Results that come faster engender trust and confidence in the system. Electronic voting also increases accessibility as citizens can vote wherever they are and do not need to engage in the substantial financial, physical and monetary costs of relocating merely to participate in elections. Moreover, electronic voting is already in use here by professional bodies with large numbers such as the Nigerian Bar Association.
We must join the modern world by adopting electronic voting. It is a matter of political will and vision.
