When Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari signed the 2022 amended Electoral Act into law on February 25, 2022, one of the overarching feelings then was that the inclusion of electronic voting and the transmission of results through the same means would protect the sanctity of democracy, ensure that the people are genuinely represented, and cut down the malfeasance that characterises elections in the country.
The use of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, a technology that allows a device to read permanent voter cards and accredit people for voting using their fingerprints, and the Election Result Viewing Portal (IReV), an internet portal where results at the polling unit level are uploaded directly from the polling unit and published for public viewing, will help ensure a credible, transparent presidential election.
Supporting democracy using modern technology
INEC insists that the twin technology is a defence against the most pervasive flaws in Nigeria’s election result management process, including falsifying votes at polling stations, altering the number of registered voters, compiling false results, mutilating results and computational errors, ballot stuffing, swapping results sheets, forging results sheets, as well as snatching and destroying results sheets.
According to the Commission, employing the BVAS and IReV will increase election results’ openness and foster more public confidence in the outcomes of recent elections in Nigeria.
Limitations to the BVAS and IReV
As much as employing BVAS, IReV, and other new electoral technologies and innovations launched by INEC will improve election integrity and inspire public trust in the electoral processes, the Commission needs to be reminded that these technologies, like all others, have limitations.
Although the use of BVAS and other electoral technology could prevent election manipulation and boost public confidence in election results, several shortcomings in the usage have been noted.
There were reports show that many ad-hoc officials used in past elections lacked proper BVAS training.
If electoral officials who administer the device to voters are not adept at using it, how do we expect voters in rural areas where literacy level is still quite low to use it effectively? There are instances where data service outages have lasted days in large cities and other urban areas. While alternatives may be available to the electoral officials in these areas, what happens when and if data coverage is erratic in rural and hard-to-reach areas?
More importantly, the contestation of the results of many polling units at the Osun governorship election tribunal that led to the sacking of Ademola Adeleke as the governor showed that unscrupulous electoral officials may still collude with politicians to circumvent INEC’s will to use technology to cut out malpractices. While such sharp practice could still be detected in the long run, especially at a tribunal, it could lead to a waste of time, money, and, ultimately, voters apathy if the scale of malpractice is large and a rerun declared.
The technical equipment has also experienced a slow, time-consuming manual process of voting and failure — an example being the Anambra state elections — which led to extension and, in some cases, postponement.
How can voters be assured of a credible election when the machines used malfunction and fail to pick up thumbprints, identify faces and capture data effectively?
The solution
The 2023 general elections are too important to be left to chance and happenstance.
The elections begin less than a month from now. Still, the days ahead provide an ample opportunity for INEC, the government, not-for-profit and other relevant bodies to foolproof the process, and ramp up awareness about BVAS and why it is important to the future of Nigeria’s democracy.
Elijah Bello is the founder of Learnpod, a tech entrepreneurship academy based in Ogun state, Nigeria.
