Ahead of the 2023 presidential election, President Muhammadu Buhari, this week, reiterated his commitment to ensuring that who will emerge as the country’s next president is elected through a peaceful and transparent process.
The President said this in a nationwide broadcast he made to mark this year’s Democracy Day Anniversary.
He said in the last seven years, his administration has made significant investments to reform the country’s electoral laws, systems and processes to safeguard the electorate’s votes.
He stressed that the right of Nigerians to choose their government would be respected.
“Fellow Nigerians, this is my last Democracy Day speech as your President. By June 12, 2023, exactly one year from today, you will already have a new President,” he said. “I remain committed and determined to ensure that the new President is elected through a peaceful and transparent process.”
Although the President recognises the voting rights of Nigerians in what we can say, theory, an examination of previous elections in Nigeria, in practice, paints a different picture. It shows that the process faced and still faces several challenges as a result of human interference. These challenges, perhaps, prodded the President to state his desire to supervise a credible and transparent presidential election next year.
No doubt, elections and other political processes are pivotal to the quality of a country’s governance and can either greatly advance or set back a country’s long-term democratic and foreign policy priorities.
The most fundamental principle that defines credible elections is that they must reflect the free expression of the will of the people.
Of course, it goes without saying that like the President, other Nigerians also wish to witness credible elections through the country’s next will emerge.
However, for the administration of Buhari to achieve this objective, elections should be transparent, inclusive and accountable, and there must be equitable opportunities to compete in the elections.
These broad principles are buttressed by several electoral process-related obligations, as well as a number of key rights and freedoms. Crucially, elections should be seen as an integrated process made up of building blocks that interact with and influence each other, rather than as a series of isolated events.
Specifically, Nigerians are eagerly looking forward to speedy innovation of the electoral management system for greater efficiency, transparency and elimination of the electoral fraud inherent in the extant manual system.
Nigeria’s democratic journey, since 1999, is going through twists and turns due to the chaotic reaction that follows the outcome of every election by both winners and losers.
With an estimated population of about 200 million people spread across 774 local government areas, the country must fully digitalise the electoral process. The registration of voters, casting of a ballot, collation and counting of the ballot and transfer and release of results can be driven by technology to achieve free, transparent, and credible elections.
By doing so, the country would be leveraging technologies proudly developed by Nigerians for effective management of our electoral process, thereby entrenching a robust and stable democratic ethos.
Thus, as the President quits the stage next year, it is important for the country’s administration, especially, to focus on the deployment of innovative technologies in the electoral process. Our ability to develop innovative applications to solve many other problems can be extended to improve our electoral system through the power of digital technologies.
Electronic voting or e-voting tech advancement has often been advocated to protect the integrity of national electorate systems and deliver a free and fair election where there is absolute transparency and integrated voters’ achievement.
The use of electronic voting will speed up vote counting, cut the cost of paying staff to count votes manually, provide easier access to disabled persons to vote and funding for elections will decrease.
E-voting is an electoral process that uses electronic means to enable the casting of ballots, counting of ballots, and transmission of the election result from polling centres to the central office of the electoral management body. It involves the use of electronic voting machines (EVMs) placed in polling stations to ensure a credible non-interference voting system.
Certainly, innovative ideas to digitalise the electoral process in the country would serve as a guarantee that winners in elections reflect the true choices of the electorate whose votes must not only count but must be seen to be counted.
In the end, as the President pointed out, we must never see elections as a “do or die” affair and always remember that democracy is about the expression of political will and the rule of the majority. In the end, there must be winners and losers!
The Presidential Council on E-government
We are living in a time of exciting technological innovations. Digital technologies are driving transformative change. Economic paradigms are shifting. The new technologies are reshaping product and factor markets and profoundly altering business and work.
The latest advances in artificial intelligence and related innovations are expanding the frontiers of the digital revolution. Digital transformation is accelerating in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The future is arriving faster than expected.
The term digital economy is being put forward to try and capture or put a box around the new ways consumers, producers and markets are interacting and exchanging goods and services.
While the term has gained significant prominence, there is not yet a definition that encapsulates what is meant by the digital economy. It is unclear if such a definition will ever emerge, in part because the digital economy is pervasive, it is not so much a piece or sector or industry of the economy, rather it is transforming the entire economy.
Accordingly, it is more appropriate to refer to the digitalisation of the economy rather than the digital economy.
Enabled by technology and social trends, the digitalisation of the economy is changing the way in which economic agents behave. Today, digital technologies and new business models are altering the way goods and services are delivered and consumed.
As more and more businesses across various industries embrace new digital technologies, the economies of countries are becoming increasingly digitalised (or digitally enabled).
Consequently, President Muhammadu Buhari, last week, inaugurated the Presidential Council on Digital Economy and E-government and promised that his administration will keep taking advantage of digital technologies to transform every sector of the economy.
The President tasks members of the council to work to strengthen the capacity of the government to develop, adopt and deploy digital technologies to make government more efficient and transparent, thereby improving Nigeria’s global standing in the ease of doing business index.
Luckily, the promises of the new technologies hold great promise as they create new avenues and opportunities for a more prosperous future. But they also pose new challenges. While digital technologies have dazzled with the brilliance and prowess of their applications, they have so far not fully delivered the expected dividend in higher productivity growth.
Indeed, aggregate productivity growth has slowed in the past couple of decades in many economies. Consequently, economic growth has trended lower. No doubt, an important reason for these outcomes is that policies and institutions have been slow to adjust to the unfolding transformations.
Thus, to realise the promise of today’s smart machines, policies need to be smarter too. They must be more responsive to change to fully capture potential gains in productivity and economic growth and address rising inequality as technological disruptions create winners and losers as well.
The 27-man committee chaired by the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Ibrahim Ali Pantami, on behalf of the President, has the following members: Boss Mustapha, Secretary to the Government of the Federation; Muhammad Inuwa Yahaya, Governor of Gombe State; Nasir Ahmed El-Rufai, Governor of Kaduna State; Abdullahi Sule, Governor of Nasarawa State; Godwin Obaseki, Governor of Edo State, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, Governor of Lagos State and Senator Hope Uzodinma, Governor of Imo State.
Others are Dr Zainab Shamsuna Ahmed, Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning; Otunba Richard Adeniyi Adebayo, Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment; Dr Folasade Yemi-Esan, Head of Civil Service of the Federation; Prof. Umar G. Danbatta, Executive Vice Chairman/CEO Nigerian Communications Commission; Prof. M.B Abubakar, Managing Director/CEO, Galaxy Backbone Limited; Dr Abimbola Alale, Managing Director/CEO, Nigerian Communications Satellite Limited and Engr Aliyu A. Aziz, Director General/CEO, National Identity Management Commission.
Also on the committee are Mr Oswald Osaretin Guobadia, Senior Special Assistant, (Digital Transformation) to the President; Engr Olufemi Olufeko, Director, e-Government Dept, Federal Ministry Of Communications and Digital Economy; A.B. Okauru, Director General, Nigeria Governors Forum; Prof. Simon Adesina Sodiya, President Nigeria Computer Society and Gbenga Adebayo, Chairman, Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON).
Other members are Prof. Kabiru Bala, Representative of Academia and Vice-Chancellor, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaira; Prof. Nnenna Oti, Representative of the Academia and Vice-Chancellor, Federal University of Technology, Owerri and Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, Secretary and the Director-General/CEO, National Information Technology Development Agency.
Mr Sungil Son, Country Director (KOICA), Dr Olufemi Adeluyi, Technical Assistant (Research and Development) to Hon. Minister of Communication and Digital Economy and Abubakar A. Dahiru, Special Assistant (Cyber Security and Digital Identity) to the Minister are also members of the Committee.
It is our hope these eminent personalities would bring to bear their wealth of experience in carrying out this crucial National assignment.
