On August 10, 2021, I wrote extensively on the advantages of introducing electronic balloting and transmission of results during the 2023 general elections. The views I espoused two years ago remain valid today, particularly considering the abuses, manipulation of results, incidents of ballot box snatching, and other heists that blemished the February 25, 2023, presidential election in which electronic voting and transmission of results were abandoned in favour of manual balloting and transmission of results.
Prior to the 2023 elections, there were calls on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to adopt modern technology during the elections. As I argued in my article in 2021, the case for electronic voting and transmission of results remains unassailable. It encourages openness, fairness, and offers every political party and candidate a level playing field.
The success or failure of the 2023 elections rests with whether INEC wants to use technology to conduct elections that will be credible, transparent, and free of violence in an open, just, encouraging, and empowering environment.
If INEC aimed to make the elections uncomplicated and seamless, it must see technology as the best tool available. Manual voting and transmission of election results are anachronistic and unreliable. They encourage widespread transgressions of election rules and procedures. They generate post-election disputes, controversies, litigations, public outrage, and general dissatisfaction with election outcomes. Manual processes of voting and communicating results are not safe and are not trusted by voters.
There was no reason for INEC to adopt outdated manual balloting and transmission of election results during the presidential election that took place nearly two weeks ago. That ill-informed action by INEC seriously damaged the integrity of the presidential election. INEC ought to have adopted election practices that are credible, dependable, and would appeal to many people. Yakubu should implement election procedures that respond to the challenges of our time and the peculiarities of our culture. Above all, the voting system and procedure for transmission of results must reflect the realities of the current era.
At various media conferences prior to the presidential election, Mahmood Yakubu pledged repeatedly that INEC would use the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) to upload election results. Unfortunately, on election day, Yakubu and his officials abandoned BVAS and chose to do things manually, thus opening up space for criminal manipulation of the results.
INEC had no justifiable reason to adopt manual voting and transmission of results regarding the presidential election. That was a violation of the Electoral Act 2022. That old-fashioned practice played right into the hands of dubious politicians and political parties that did not want to uphold fair rules or see free, credible, and visibly hassle-free elections.
In 2007, INEC, under the leadership of Professor Maurice Iwu, announced it had approved the use of electronic voting machines for that year’s general election. Iwu contended at the time that the use of electronic voting machines would produce fewer post-election acrimonies and complaints. He drew out a road map that addressed four key areas, namely: the electronic voters’ register; method of identifying voters; the balloting system; and electronic transmission of election results.
The audacious rigging of the 2023 presidential election has brought to the front burner the importance of using electronic balloting and transmission of election results. If electronic balloting and transmission of results had been implemented during the recent presidential election, we would have seen fewer complaints regarding the results of that election.
My position has always been that, if technologies were available, accessible, and affordable, they should be deployed during elections to make the process transparent, and to make post-election experience less litigious. The value of technology to our private and public life cannot be under-estimated.
Previous elections in Nigeria, including the most recent, were marred by unprecedented malpractices that had everything to do with the manual system of voting and the physical, labour-intensive method adopted in transmitting the results.
INEC chairperson Mahmood Yakubu was strongly advised to adopt technology during this year’s elections. But, like a showman who performs for the gallery with little knowledge of the challenges ahead, he boasted about the magical powers of BVAS and the so-called INEC Election Result Viewing Portal (IReV) that INEC had acquired for use during the 2023 elections. Unfortunately, INEC set up the technologies to fail during the elections, resulting in widespread abuses of the technologies.
Despite Yakubu’s upbeat spirit, it was obvious that he never believed in the technologies he said INEC would use during the elections. Unsurprisingly, BVAS and IReV were installed but the INEC officials conspired to make the technologies unworkable. Consider this fraud that occurred during and after the presidential election.
While BVAS worked very well during the upload of the results of the Senatorial and House of Representatives’ elections, the BVAS failed to work when the presidential election results were being uploaded. For more than 24 hours, something strange happened. The same technology that facilitated the upload of the National Assembly election results developed faults and could not upload results of the presidential election held on the same day. That was mischief on display.
There are numerous ways that technology can strengthen the conduct of free, fair, credible, and open elections in Nigeria. Technology will disrupt and expose the evil practices of election officials and party representatives. Technology will not permit the audacious action of election officials who deliberately manipulate votes cast during election through stuffing of ballot boxes with illegally thump-printed ballot papers. Technology will reduce, eliminate, or discourage buying of voters’ cards by politicians who are keen to exaggerate the number of votes they would receive during an election.
Technology will not allow INEC officials or party agents to alter results announced at each collation centre before they are conveyed to INEC head office in Abuja. This is critical. Manual transmission of results provides a space for fraudulent election officials and political party representatives to produce fake results that are at odds with the actual votes cast in each polling booth. Technology will invalidate all that nonsense.
Finally, technology will ensure that only duly registered voters can cast ballots during election. While these points might appear pedantic to politicians who abhor the rule of law and are unwilling to observe election rules, support for use of technology is driven by genuine desire and concerns to fix, once and for all, common problems seen during elections in Nigeria.
In early hours of the day he announced the dubious results of the presidential election, INEC chairperson Mahmood Yakubu spoke like an automaton, a programmed device that reads information fed to it, without bothering to check whether the information was accurate or inaccurate, whether the information was obtained through fraudulent means or legitimate process, and not minding whether the information was manipulated and handed over to him to parrot what was written on the piece of paper.
Several lessons must be learned from the 2023 presidential election experience. Yakubu and his INEC officials must learn to treat Nigerians with a measure of respect. There was no reason to rush to announce the winner of the election. There was no reason to rush to present the certificate of return to Bola Ahmed Tinubu whom Yakubu claimed won the election. For Yakubu to assert that the presidential election was free, fair, credible, transparent, and unblemished was to uphold evil and falsehood, and to turn reason upside down.