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Analysts say the adoption of electronic voting may help solve some of the challenges associated with the conduct of elections in the country, writes Akanni Alaka
With the conclusion of most of the supplementary polls, the battle for victory by candidates, who contested for various positions in the 2019 general election will in the next few weeks shift to the courtrooms of already constituted election petition tribunals across the country.
Already, candidates who felt shortchanged in the electoral process have been filing bulky petitions, asking the tribunals to reverse the victory of their opponents in the polls, as declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
Candidates aggrieved by the outcome of the Houses of Assembly, governorship and National Assembly elections are filing their petitions at the tribunals constituted for their various states.
For the presidential election, former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, and his party, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, had filed a petition at the Presidential Election Tribunal in Abuja to challenge INEC’s declaration of President Muhammadu Buhari as the winner of the February 23, 2019 presidential poll.
INEC had on February 27, declared Buhari, who contested on the platform of All Progressives Congress, APC, winner of the presidential election after he got a total of 15,191,847 votes to defeat Atiku, who scored 11,262,978 votes. But Atiku had in his petition rejected the result, claiming that election was marred by irregularities, while also alleging that data from the INEC server revealed that his votes were reduced in 31 states and the Federal Capital Territory, FCT.
Contrary to INEC’s declaration, Atiku claimed that he defeated Buhari with 1,615,302 votes based on the alleged data from the server. It was gathered that APC had also assembled top legal luminaries to defend its victory at the presidential election.
Also, reports over the weekend indicated that INEC would this Monday inaugurate a legal team it has engaged to defend its declaration of President Buhari, as the winner of the presidential election. Atiku and other aggrieved candidates across the country will be waiting on the verdicts of the tribunals on their petitions to determine their next political moves.
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Problems, problems
Other stakeholders, especially civil society organisations and observers groups, who monitored the process of Nigeria’s 2019 general election, starting from the aborted February 16 presidential and National Assembly polls to last weekend’s supplementary elections have been giving their verdicts based on reports from the hundreds of observers they deployed to the field.
In the various statements it has released on the elections so far, the Centre for Democracy and Development, CDD, one of the leading observer groups, identified poor handling of logistics by the INEC, a situation which led to late arrival of election materials and personnel in some polling units across the country, malfunctioning of the Smart Card Readers as some of the major glitches that dogged the election.
While the Smart Card readers failed to live up to expectations in the reading and matching of the fingerprints of voters to their voter cards in some places, observers deployed by the Centre also reported deliberate refusal to use the device in some places, with voters resorting to manual voting.
Also, the Centre had also reported incidents of widespread violence with the use of armed thugs by politicians to disrupt the electoral process, attacks on staff of INEC, and failure to protect electoral staff and materials by security operatives all aimed at undermining the system to favour the perpetrators.
Also widespread during the elections as contained in various statements released by CDD were incidents of vote buying and under age voting as well as snatching of ballot boxes.
The Centre, in the report which mirrored that of its counterparts lamented what it described as the “disturbing degeneration of our country’s competitive and electoral politics since the 2015 general elections, as exemplified in the securitisation, vote-buying and mindless violence witnessed during the Ekiti and Osun governorship elections and the just concluded 2019 general elections.”
It further noted that “Beyond electoral outcomes, the country needs to strengthen the process leading to and resulting in them in a manner to create a fair playing ground for all political parties and a political and legal framework that will ensure electoral integrity.”
E-voting to the rescue?
Already, INEC had indicated its readiness to lead the process of evaluating the whole gamut of the management of the
Nigeria at the end of the 2019 polls.
Even then, analysts have not been quiet about some of the measures they think can help address some of the challenges associated with the conduct of elections in Nigeria.
One of the solutions, Mr. Akin Orebiyi, the immediate past Resident Electoral Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, in Lagos State, said is greater adoption of technology in the electoral system. “If we can be using mobile phones today, which reach anybody in the world to conduct businesses, to do banking, to call people, transmit photographs and other information, why are we not ready for what will bring tremendous solutions to electoral causes. For me, any day, I will vote for the voting machines. Electronic voting has overwhelming advantages,” Orebiyi said, while assessing the conduct of the 2019 general elections.
The former INEC REC said he had used electronic voting machines as a leader of a delegation to a conference in Dominican Republic in 2015 and he was impressed with the working of the device.
Also, Professor of International Law and Jurisprudence, Akin Oyebode said Nigeria’s electoral system can be strengthened if the constitution is amended to accommodate electronic voting and transmission of results.
While lamenting that Nigeria is still battling to organise elections despite having a history of involvement in electoral process stretching all the way back to 1922, Prof. Oyebode said if political actors in Nigerian can be made to imbibe democratic ethos of playing the game according to the rules, the adoption of technology will help to bring more credibility to the electoral system.
“There is a felt need for reform of our Constitution and electoral laws in order to admit of digitalisation and electronic voting and transmission of results. With such reforms, the current rough edges of our electoral process are done away with once and for all time,” said Oyebode.
The allure of e-voting
Analysts who spoke to The Nigerian Xpress pointed out that the shift by INEC from the use of huge paper register and voter cards made from paper to the Electronic Voter Register signified gradual move towards electronic voting in Nigeria. According to them, use of electronic register as embedded in smart card readers was expected to help eliminate duplication of names in the register and thereby enhance the credibility of the process.
However, full electronic voting will entail digitising the electoral process from the registration stage, accreditation, vote counting and collation. Advocates argued that migration to e-voting will help reduce the problems of rigging, snatching of ballot boxes as well as logistic problems associated with moving thousands of tonnes of ballot papers around the country during every election cycle.
They also argued that with the adoption of e-voting, there may not be need to restrict movement during elections, thus reducing economic losses incurred during election period.
The limitation of human involvement in the process also means greater transparency and less likelihood of interference. Also, the country will also eliminate the amount being spent on procurement of ballot papers among other advantages.
Despite these advantages, when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Finance in February 2017, Professor Yakubu Mahmood, the chairman of INEC told lawmakers that the Commission is not ready to adopt e-voting.
Apart from the excuse of lack of necessary constitutional backing, the INEC chairman also pointed out that e-voting would be too expensive and complicated for the Commission to embark on. Despite his opposition, the Senate had in March 2017 attempted to move Nigeria towards electronic voting when it passed the Electoral Act No. 6 2010 (Amendment) Bill 2017 into law.
The bill gives INEC the power to conduct electronic voting. “The passage of this bill in the Senate is a bold, innovative and common sense step on electoral reforms designed to guarantee free, fair and credible elections in Nigeria,” Senate President, Bukola Saraki said on the passage of the bill.
But members of the House of Representatives seemed not excited with the prospect of making the electoral process go fully digital as they voted against inclusion of e-voting in the final version of the amendment of the Electoral Act.
The lawmakers, however, agreed to make provisions for electronic transmission of results from polling units in the final bill sent to the President for assent. A member of the House of Representatives, Douye Diri had said then that use of technology for transmission of results from polling units wouldmake the result of the elections acceptable to Nigerians and the international community, even as he commended INEC for the “positive drift towards technology.”
But Festus Keyamo, spokesperson for President Muhammadu Buhari’s Campaign Organisation had cited the inclusion of the clause on electronic transmission of results as one of the reasons for the controversial refusal of the President to sign the electoral bill.
Keyamo had argued that electronic transmission of results from polling units across Nigeria could not be done because many parts of the country still did not have access to the internet.
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E-voting in Kaduna
Despite such apprehensions, Kaduna State in 2018 made history when it decided to conduct its local government election using electronic machines.
Governor Nasir El-Rufai, said the EVMs used for the e-voting were adopted after the study of voting systems of Brazil and India, where electronic voting was widely in use.
“The entire election cost us in the region of N4 billion. But, mind you, with the electronic voting now, we don’t need ballot paper, so we saved N1.7 billion in ballot papers alone. And, these machines can be used for three or four more elections because they can last for 10 years, all we need is to upgrade the software to add more parties and so on,” the governor said .
He revealed that Kaduna State Electoral Commission brought in 300 of the machines produced in China for the election. According to him, officials of the Commission also embarked on awareness campaign going round the state, markets and other places to teach people how to use the machines. “What we are very happy about is that ordinary people could use it. The interface was friendly, simple and you can finish voting for the chairman and councillor in less than 15 seconds,” said the governor.
He added that the electronic voting machines keep record of how many people have voted and will shut itself down at the set time for end of voting, thus enhancing credibility of the process. “At federal level, I will recommend it as well because with the card reader and the electronic voting machine, the era of rigging elections is almost over and I think that is when people will have confidence in the process and will come out enmass to vote for their leaders. Aside the seemingly obvious tamper-proof nature of this technology, unknown to even the electoral officers, before the final triggered transmission, the EVMs will be transmitting results live to a monitoring room in the commission’s ICT centre and simultaneously saving same on a server,” he said.
The Challenges
“Of course, human factors intervened; some people abducted the presiding officers with the machines and engaged in multiple voting. Some people tried to change the results and of course we are still doing manual collection,” Governor El-Rufai said.
But the data in the electronic voting machine can still be used to discredit some of those changes during the tribunal process, he said, while admitting that the machines may not be a cure-all solution for all the afflictions of Nigeria’s electoral process.
Apart from the possibility of the theft of the machines, one of the problems associated with e-voting, even in countries like India with long experience with the use of the system is the fear of hacking. The India Election Commission was directed to use the Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail, VVPATs linked to EVMs after questions were raised on the possibility of pre-loading the machines with votes by some political parties in the Asian country.
Analysts also pointed out that the use of EVMs to vote is different from allowing people to vote online from the comfort of their homes through the internet, a practice which is very rare in most parts of the world, including the United States, contrary to the belief of many Nigerians.
Some countries in Africa, including Kenya and Somaliland have already introduced e-voting. On the issue of infrastructure, some have argued that the EVMS run on batteries and hence, do not require electricity to work.
Some have also argued for a phased introduction of the use of EVMs for election in the country, beginning from where there are infrastructures for the deployment of the machines.
But Orebiyi agreed that a lot of work must be done in terms of ensuring the buy-in of politicians who already believed anything electronic can be manipulated or used for fraud if Nigeria wants to introduce e-voting.
According to him, a thorough training was also required for those that would handle the machines as well as education and enlightenment for the electorate.