INEC and hurdles of full-blown technology in Nigeria’s elections

EMEKA NZE examines some of the lessons and resolutions of the just concluded international conference on the opportunities and challenges in the use of technology in elections
The current leadership of Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is apparently not resting on its oars to upgrade the country’s electoral system and ensure it joins the comity of nations which have achieved integrity in the management and conduct of elections.
Sadly, the more it tries, the more glaring it becomes that Nigeria is behind many other countries, especially, in the use of technologies to conduct its elections. This entirely not because of the fault of the elections management body but due to legal hurdles it has to cross to attain the feat. The commission, more often than not, dwells on existing legal framework (the 2010 Electoral Act as amended) in taking some measures, any measure, aimed at improving its operations.
The above reason is evidenced by the country’s tardiness in adopting uncommon measures to improve its operations, which even some smaller countries in the continent have long attained.
Last week’s International Conference organised by INEC and the ECOWAS Network of Electoral Commissions (ECONEC) in collaboration with the Electoral Commissions Forum-Southern Africa Development Communities (ECF/SADC), exposed that it may take Nigeria yet a couple of more years to attain full scale electronic voting.
The conference supported by the European Centre for Electoral Support (ECES) on the theme: “Opportunities and Challenges in the use of Technologies in Elections”, laid bare the huge benefits of deploying full blown technologies in the conduct of elections but despite these benefits, Nigeria in 2019 general elections, may still not go farther than the use of electronic collation and electronic transmission of results.
At the end of the conference, INEC chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, gave credence to this when he clarified that, in the forthcoming general elections, the electorate should not expect electronic voting because the commission is only prepared to undertake electronic collation and transmission of results.
The implication is that Nigeria is not yet reap for e-voting. Although Yakubu did not explain further, it is clear from previous encounters with the INEC chairman that extant laws have to be amended by the National Assembly to pave way for a holistic deployment of technologies that will culminate in electronic voting.
Today, Nigeria is still grappling to electronically register her voters as well as deploy the Smart Card Readers (SCR) to authenticate the identity of the voter during elections. That is the extent the country can go for now.
But in other climes, including neighbouring countries, the benefits of electronic voting are already being harvested. For instance, Namibia, a country in Southern Africa, has gone full scale in the deployment of Information, Communications and Technology (ICT) in all their electoral processes since 2013.
According to the Executive Committee chairperson, Election Commission Forum-South African Development Community, (ECF-SADC), Adv Notemba Tjipueja, who featured prominently at the Abuja Conference last week, the deployment of technology in the electoral processes, such as voter registration, biometrics, voter identification, results processing and electronic voting, can be of immense benefits.
Tjipueja, who is also the chairman of Electoral Commission of Namibia while attesting to her country’s feat as the first in Africa to deploy electronic voting machine, enumerated some of the benefits to include automatic and error free counting, replacement of ballot paper and ballot box and elimination of spoilt ballot.
Other benefits, according to the Amazon of Namibia’s Elections Management Body (EMB), are minimising of human error, speeding up voting process, securing of votes on control units and maintaining the secrecy of the ballot.
In her own goodwill message, the president, European Centre for Electoral Support (ECES), Ms Monica Frassoni from Belgium, among other things, noted that overall, technology in electoral and democratic processes despite their pros and cons, “is meant to deliver higher precision and accuracy, makes each operation traceable and delivers higher reliability meaning, that the same operation could be undertaken by someone else and it would generate the exact same results. ICTs are meant to mitigate to a certain extent the human error,” she said.
Frassoni, however, did not portray herself as dogmatic in use of ICT. She stated that while “ICT can facilitate the electoral process, it can also create confusion.”
She further said: “The perception of an impartial and competent electoral management body is a precondition for technology to be perceived as an aid to the perfection of the electoral process.”
The above statement presupposes that technology itself is not an end but a means to an end. It does not ensure the integrity of the ballot but the human agents involved in the electoral management do. This underscores the garbage in garbage out principle when electoral materials are handled by mischievous or incompetent staff. Conversely, technology can achieve a lot high fidelity results if handled by perfectionists and competent staffers.
The ECES president urged participants at the conference to adopt measures capable of fostering public perception of ICTs and technology as useful to deliver credible election results instead of the too often news “in Africa, Europe and America about ICTs being used to influence election results.”
Emerging from the three day international conference, INEC chairman, Prof Yakubu, stated unequivocally that technology in the management of elections in the African sub-region has come to stay, noting that their various commissions would try to retain the confidence of the people as technology is about the people.
The conference amongst other things, acknowledged that the benefits of the use of technology to boost confidence in the electoral process and for the protection of the sanctity and integrity of the ballot in ensuring that leaders in the ECOWAS and ECF-SADC now obtain their mandate and legitimacy solely through the ballot box based on the rule of law and the will of the people.
On the outcomes of the conference the EMBs of ECONEC and ECF-SADC are willing to take advantage of the opportunities offered by technological innovations to improve the credibility of the electoral processes and to enhance the sanctity of the ballot and the integrity of the electoral outcomes.
In doing so, the conference urged the EMBs to view the application of technological innovation in the electoral process as a facilitator rather than a “magic bullet” for the delivery of good band credible elections by adopting simple, appropriate and cost effective and sustainable technologies.
The deployment of such technologies should be secured by law, protected against intrusion and accompanied by appropriate training of electoral officials and effective civic education to engender trust, confidence and ownership by all stakeholders.