A former presidential candidate of the Progressives Peoples Alliance (PPA), High Chief Peter Ojonugwa-Ameh, has described electronic transmission of election results as the key to a transparent, credible, free and fair election outcomes.
In a statement Sunday in Abuja the ex-presidential candidate maintained that “the electronic transmission of results does not in anyway jettison the old manual order of election result collation process.”
Mr Ameh said pressure should be mounted on the National Assembly to pass the amendment bill which contains clauses on electronic transmission of election results.
Ameh, the immediate past President of Inter Party Advisory Council (IPAC), said “electronic transmission of election result will almost put an end to the criminal history of election manipulations in Nigeria that occurs from polling stations to collation centres.”
The statement further read, “We need this particular clause to become reality in order to make sure that the outcome of our elections reflect the true wishes of the Nigeria people.
“It will put an end to ballot box snatching, ballot stuffing, forgery of election result and presentation of fake election result, thuggery will die a natural death. Continuous voter registration will have no advantage if the new electoral act does not come with electronic transmission of votes.”
He said “it is rather an added advantage to the security and improvement of the process thereby giving the nation dual election transmission system.”
While commending the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on its efforts at introducing new innovations, he said more pressure should be exerted on both INEC and other none state actors to get them to do the right thing.
“Our being indifferent as a people in relation to how we view elections and issues of political participation is our major problem.
“We are sometimes driven by political bias but how long will that last if you don’t fix the problem before we find ourselves on the long end of the stick.”
He stated that PDP when in power resisted the bill against defections between 1999 to 2015, adding that the same PDP has become a victim of mass defections by its members.
“We must always work for posterity instead of protecting our selfish interest”, he said.
“Bad leaders are elected because of those who refused to participate and we emboldened them with this popular quote that half bread is better than none. That’s not true.
“All we are doing here amount to nothing if we don’t mount pressure on the National Assembly over the issues of electronic transmission of election result.”
