A recent poll result has shown that Nigerians are ready for the electronic transfer of election results even as more awareness is needed for the ongoing Continuous Voters Registration. IDACHABA SUNNY ELEOJO reports.
As Nigeria inches closely towards the 2023 general elections, there is no doubt many issues naturally rear their heads demanding to be addressed in order to have a smooth transition. Some of these bother on the level of preparedness towards the election for which the electoral umpire has beat its chest repeatedly that it has all it takes to conduct a seamless election especially electronically.To that extent, many Nigerians have queued behind the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in support of electronic transmission of election results.
Electronic transfer of results
According to a recent poll survey conducted in all the geopolitical zones of the country by NOI Poll, a copy of which was obtained by Blueprint, seven out of 10 Nigerians support INEC in its mission of electronically transmitting election results since the electoral umpire says it has all it takes to do so.”Twenty six percent says the system is reliable while 24 percent says it would reflect the true desire of Nigerians. Seventeen percent said it would reduce rigging during elections. It could be recalled that in recent times, the argument for or against the use of technology to transmit election result has been a subject of debate, with the National Assembly lawmakers voting against electronic transfer while INEC insists it already has the enabling act and wherewithal to go ahead with the plan
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According to the lawmakers, INEC does not have the capacity to transmit election results electronically nationwide. On the contrary, INEC, through its national commissioner for information and voter Education, Mr Festus Okoye, dismissed that insinuation. Okoye noted that the commission has the ability to transmit election results electronically. Okoye further stated that the commission has the capacity for electronic transmission of results even from any remote areas of the country.
Ongoing CVR
Also, the poll revealed that only 50 percent of adult Nigerians acknowledge awareness of the ongoing Continuous Voter Registration (CVR); however, the other half claimed not to be aware.Given this level of awarenss, NOI says INEC needs to aggressively embark on further awareness campaigns across the country.According to the survey, “Geograhical location showed that 56 percent of the North-central are aware of the exercise whereas 37 percent of the South-east has the lowest number of Nigerians who are aware of the exercise.” In another development, the poll result revealed that only seven percent of adult Nigerians claimed to have partucipated since the commencement of the online and physical registration exercise on June 28th and July 26th respectively. It noted further, “According to the 2018 projected adult population by the National Population Commission, this figure represents about 7.4 million adult Nigerians who claimed to have registered since the commencement of this exercise.” In addition, the NOI Polls survey according to age group revealed that the highest proportion of adult Nigerians who claimed to have registered were among those between 18 and 35 years, representing about 600,000 adult Nigerians since the commencement of the exercise. “This finding corroborates with the figures obtained by INEC from the distribution of registrants which indicated that a higher percentage of those that have so far applied were youths aged between 18 and 34.3.”It is gratifying to know that 63 percent of adult Nigerians disclosed that they already have their Permeant Voters Card (PVC), eight percent applied for the transfer of the PVC to their current location, while five have their Temporary Voters Card (TVC). Cumulatively, this percentage implies that about 81 million Nigerians have already been identified and included in the voters’ register of INEC.”On the flip side, 17 percent of adult Nigerians indicated that they have not registered at all. “Finally, more needs to be done on the part of INEC to ensure that more Nigerians are registered before the electioneering activities commence as 17percent of adult Nigerians stated that they are yet to register. There is need for more awareness and voter education especially on online registration as it will go a long way in easing the stress of registration created by manual and physical registration,” the poll reveals.
