Nigeria’s elections have usually been marred by rigging and violence, leading to deaths and destruction of properties. But the Nigerian Computer Society (NCS) believes the application of technology to the process would change the narrative, reports LUCAS AJANAKU
THE Nigerian Computer Society (NCS) has said the application of technology to the elector al process in the country would deliver free, fair and rancour-free elections.
Its President, Prof Adesola Aderounmu, said there is the need for information communication technology (ICT) to be deployed to electioneering not only in the country, but also in sub-Saharan Africa.
Speaking on: The future of elections in Nigeria: Leveraging ICT infrastructure for sustainable national electoral process at theFifth Covenant University Conference on e-Governance in Nigeria at Otta, Ogun State, he said elections should be seen as the best opportunity to encourage political leaders to promote innovation in the polity.
“So, using ICT to elect credible leaders could motivate successful and satisfied politicians to encourage emerging governments to adapt the innovations to mainstream development and governance.
“As the 2019 elections draw closer, there is no doubt that putting in place relevant ICT infrastructure for the application of adaptable technology in our electoral processes will go a long way to ensure transparency and credibility of the elections. It is a welcome development that leveraging technology had started, even if rudimentary, with the last 2015 elections that ushered in the present administration in Nigeria.
“For instance, the application of technology for biometric registration of voters, the issuance of smart permanent voters card (PVC) to voters and voter verification and authentication using the smart card reader, has helped the infiltration of ICT into the electoral process. So also was the idea to scan and upload all voting result sheets for all the elections on a database, which was made accessible to all stakeholders for some months after the 2015 elections. All these formative adaptations of technology with the 2015 elections are commendable, but there is still a long way to go with our future elections,” Aderounmu said.
Sensitisation, civic education, e-inclusion
Aderounmu, who is the Co-Centre Leader, World Bank-Designated Centre of Excellence in Software Engineering, ObafemiAwolowo University, Ile-Ife, said when it comes to conducting elections, sensitisation and civic education are key in the electoral process and are necessary for democracy. It is all about voter consciousness and popular participation in elections. The citizens, who are voters, need to be effectively sensitised or enlightened about their civic duties and rights during elections.
According to him, voter education should come before and during an electoral event, showing how, where, and when to vote. Citizens need to know why they must turn out to vote and how to cast their votes to make them count. Sensitissing and educating voters have always been done via the traditional mass media and direct town-hall community engagements.
He said now with the pervasive influence of technology in society today, educating and cultivating the voters can be done better with the leverage of digital media such as mobile phone with bulk SMS, bulk voice call or inbound interactive voice response, and the use of web-portals from pre-election polls.
“Digital technology now enriches political communications and voter engagement like never before. And with the majority of people having access to computers and mobile technology devices these days, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and other concerned agencies can transform the sensitisation, civic education and e-inclusion of with the use of the internet via popular social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp and special mobile apps to channel and disseminate voter education messages,” he said.
According to him, digital media help information to be disseminated faster, smarter and real-time, reaching far more people and carrying everybody along. As an illustration, the Barack Obama American presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012 as well as the global Arab Spring in 2011 transformed interest in leveraging networked digital connectivity for political action. During those epochal moments, he recalled, the use of social media for citizen engagement spread like wild fire. “Today, even experts at the Brookings Center for Technology Innovation in the U.S. affirmatively advocate “using social networking and digital tools to reinvigorate democracy and extend electronic engagement from campaigns and grassroots-activism to governance.” However, he said it is also possible that not every Nigerian voter will have access to new, cost-effective technological solutions like internet-enabled smartphones.
For instance, using the internet for voter engagement is a step forward in accommodating technologically advanced voters. So, INEC needs to consider these less-technologically advanced voters as we adopt ICT in our electoral process. And also, voter education should be a continuous process and not necessarily tied to an election year.
Constituency delimitation
Another way to leverage ICT for Nigeria’s electoral process is through constituency delimitation, using digital maps and charts for proper voter registration.
In a democracy, constituency delimitation is very important and an improper segmentation of constituencies can compromise the electoral process, thereby provoking needless conflicts and insinuations of marginalisation among peoples and politicians. To address this, it is better to apply the use of ICT solutions, such as digital mapping, digital charts, Global Positioning System (GPS) and GIS Satellite Footprints like the NigeriaSat-1. GPS uses satellites that orbit earth to send information to GPS receivers that are on the ground. The information so received helps people determine their location.
Registration, data capture
Voter registration and data capture constitute a major foundational step in the electoral process. Without a proper voters register, there cannot be proper elections. Voter registration helps to facilitate the credibility of the electoral process by preventing multiple voting as each person is only allowed to register once. With this, no one is allowed to register at multiple centres. It helps in preventing cases of underage voting because only adults of voting age (18 years and above) are registered. He said there have always been controversies over voter registration as some complain of ghost names appearing on the voters register, names of foreign nationals appearing and names of under-age voters appearing too on the register. The use of a centralised countrywide database for voter registration, drawing on the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) data inventory will be good. Updates to the centralised database can be done through web portal e-mails with smart fields, mobile apps, and automatic fingerprint and photo identification systems. In a way, online voter registration via the internet is simpler and more secure than paper registration and manual updates, Aderounmu said.
Voter verification, voting
He said when election day comes, ICT also has a huge role to play in streamlining the electoral process to make the election outcomes fair and valid. In fact, the deployment of technology during elections is most consequential because it helps minimise the rampant incidents of rigging and its resultant crises.
“Thus voter verification and voting on election day can be digitally done through the use of direct electronic recoding machine, optical scanning system, use of smart cards and card readers,” he said.
Card reader technology was deployed during the 2015 general elections, but card readers malfunctioned in a lot of voting areas across the country. There were even complaints by some governors that the card readers deployed by INEC could not read their fingerprints at the polling booths.
He said for the coming 2019 elections, we hope INEC would have upgraded the card reader technology to be more effective and error-free. Also, the security of the voting technology is of great concern, and INEC officials must take significant steps to secure the voting equipment from their warehouses to the voting centres. This is where GPS technology also proves useful, as it helps INEC to track its drivers as they deliver equipment and supplies to the polling booths or transport election results from there, to avoid tampering with sensitive vote data.
Vote counting,computation
For so long in Nigeria, the use of manual systems in vote counting during elections has been the practice. This process should be transformed with digital computation technology that is cheaper, faster and more accurate. Deploying technology in vote counting will also improve the electoral process by making the counting of tedious electoral systems easier to use.
Thus, new ICT innovations can be used to replace traditional paper ballots. As earlier said under voter verification and voting, using direct electronic devices, or using machine-readable ballots, can help remove the need to count ballots manually and greatly speed up the vote counting process, as well as guaranteeing accuracy. So, with vote counting and computation, it is highly recommended that INEC engages the use of result management systems. Most automated voting systems even come with analytics based software to make vote counting and computation easier.
Result dissemination
After votes have been properly counted and computed, vote results can also be digitally disseminated to the public. Results can be streamed real-time from INEC website, obtained via SMS Query interfacing with INEC website and real-time RSS Feed.
Other ICT apps
The applications of technology in improving the electoral process and enriching democracy are quite many. There are other ICT apps such as the automation of electoral court system; digitisation of ballot papers; use of financial tracking technologies for campaign funds that require the cooperation of financial institutions; deployment of motion detectable security cameras at polling booths (in addition to cameras attached to the voting system); use of robots for detection and diffusing improvised explosive devices (IEDs); and use of body scanners with alarm system at polling booths.
Challenges
There are enormous challenges against deploying an ICT-driven electoral system in Nigeria. This is not surprising because the penetration of new technological advances in other areas of our national life has always been sluggish, aside e-commerce and social media.
He sad political manipulation by political actors is a major challenge against the adoption of ICT in the electoral process. “We all know that Nigerian politicians take elections as a do-or-die affair and would kick against, or circumvent, any innovation that would deny them the opportunity to rig elections in their favour. So, the desperation of politicians to win elections by all means can frustrate or slow down the penetration of ICT in our electoral process,” he said.
Also, abysmally inadequate infrastructure is a challenge against the leverage of technology in the electoral system. There is poor IT and base infrastructure in the country.
Then, there is also the perennial problem of poor power infrastructure militating the application of ICT tools in the electoral process. It is a fact that IT needs stable power to function; when that is lacking, as it is the case in Nigeria, adoption of technology in the electoral system can be frustratingly
