Electronic Transmission of results will address voter apathy’ – Former CROSIEC Chairman

‘Electronic transmission of electoral results has been described as a panacea to voter apathy in Nigeria.’ The immediate past Chairman of the Cross River State Independent Electoral Commission, CROSIEC, Dr. Mike Ushie has asserted that Nigeria was ‘ripe’ enough to adopt electronic voting and transfer of results.

On Thursday, July 15, 2021, the Nigerian Senate passed the electoral amendment bill amid disagreements to clause 52(3), which prescribed that INEC (Independent National Electoral Commission) might adopt electronic voting and transmission of results where practicable.

Transparency

Ushie, who is also a don in the Department of Political Science at the University of Calabar, UNICAL, said that adopting electronic voting would imbue confidence and enhance transparency.

According to him, “the amendment is long overdue. In western climes and parts of Africa, elections are electronic although imperfect. Even here in UNICAL, we used online voting for our student union elections. Millions of Nigerians even vote in the big brother and other shows online. So, what are we talking about? In my opinion, it is the will to do it.

“Voter apathy has to do with the interest of the people in the electoral process. The confidence they have in the umpire will make people put away apathy. When they believe that their votes would not count, they will not come out to vote.

“But, by the time we institute electronic system of voting and transmission of results, it would cure the sickness of apathy. I also think this is the time for our President Muhammadu Buhari to bequeath a legacy to Nigerians. He is about completing eight years and he has done well. However, instituting electronic voting system would be a great legacy.”

Test Run

However, the political science guru agreed that Nigeria had during the administration of Attahiru Jega as the INEC chairman, experimented with electronic voting and was unsuccessful.

Ushie insisted that the upcoming elections in Anambra, Ekiti and Osun States be used to test run the electronic voting process again before the conduct of the 2023 general elections.

He said, “whatever lapses were experienced at the time, I expected that by now INEC would have addressed those problems. That is what we should be doing now. If it is server problem, today, we save in the clouds. INEC can use cloud technology to save data. Like I said it is about the will to do it.

“There are elections coming up like the Anambra, Ekiti and Osun and smaller elections in other states. We can use them to test run the process and before we get to 2023, INEC will be perfect. By then the failures would have been corrected. That is my opinion about it.”

He further suggested that harmonizing current online data of Nigerians obtained during the registration for National Identity Number, NIN, Immigration and others as well as employing the services of ICT experts would ease INEC’s workload.

“There is a paper I wrote about harmonizing data in Nigeria. All we need to do is to harmonize the various sources of data. In fact, we should have a situation where you pick up a card and you get connected from anywhere in Nigeria. We can do it instead of having separate and independent data for the various agencies without any attempt to harmonize them.

“This would settle the problem of voters’ register, which is with INEC. They also have the polling booths. We can get the electronic system up and running properly within six months with the help of experts. So, I feel INEC should be given a free hand to conduct elections that will bring confidence in people,” he stressed.

Suzan O