E-Business
Opportunities and Challenges of eVoting in Nigeria

Option A4 was a simple, perhaps, a funny electoral system – voters stood in a single file and together with the electoral officer they counted 1, 2, 3, 4 and kept counting to the end of the line.
At the end of voting you could see voters from different wards in the same area adding figures to indicate that collation had started in earnest.
Option A4, which produced Chief M.K.O. Abiola on June 12, 1993, captured the hunger of Nigerians for an electoral system that is transparent and accountable.
That hunger persists today and is manifest in the numerous calls for the adoption of e voting. Nigeria has not developed to be anything near the giant of Africa as prophesied at independence in 1960.
This gross underperformance can be linked to the fact that, in the past 50 years, leaders have been imposed on Nigeria through coup d’états or incredible elections.
The soldier strong enough to shoot his way through to the microphone in Radio Nigeria, Ikoyi, gained the right to form a government for Nigeria.
Politicians undermined the attempts at democracy with money, religion and ethnicity; they set up structures at the grassroots (unemployed men and women) to engage in multiple voting, snatch and stuff ballot boxes, inflate tallied scores at the collation centres and form the vanguard for mayhem if their candidate was not declared winner.
E voting will eliminate these problems associated with paper ballot voting. Furthermore, e voting is convenient, increases the participation of the citizenry and strengthens weak democratic structures like the Electoral Commission, the Civil Society and the Political Parties (call to mind the feebleness of Humphrey Nwosu’s NEC and the crumbling of Anenih’s SDP). E voting confers credibility on the Government, and reduces the cost of organizing elections.
Beyond the benefits to the electoral system, e voting brings another golden opportunity to promote the growth of Nigerian technology. Windows of growth are opened to research and manufacturing companies each time a country deploys robust ICT equipment.
As an aside, it is difficult to understand why Nigeria, with millions of unemployed University and Polytechnic graduates, is importing millions of Pre- Paid Meters for electricity distribution from South and North Korea, Taiwan and China. The digitization of broadcasting requires the distribution of over 35 million TV boxes in Nigeria and again the local manufacturers would be snubbed as in the Pre-Paid Meters case. E voting offers another huge opportunity for technology transfer and acquisition.
Hundreds of thousands of voting machines would be deployed if Nigeria adopts e voting for the elections in 2019.
At this time, The Federal Government and the Independent Electoral Commission should be engaging local manufacturing companies, working closely with NOTAP, to design and fabricate the Nigerian Voting Machine. Nigeria is, as usual, dithering 20 years behind peers like Brazil, going by Wikipedia reports of what other nations have done.
The Brazilian Electoral Justice in 1996 launched the Brazilian Voting Machine. In 2010 Presidential elections, 135 million voters used the Brazilian Electronic Ballot Boxes and the result was defined 75 minutes after the end of voting.
In India, in 2004, 380 million voters cast their votes through the Electronic Voting Machines, EVM. The Indian Electronic Voting Machines were designed and developed by two companies owned by the Indian Government – Bharat Electronics and Electronics Corporation of India.
This is not the time to agonize over the comatose state of the Defense Industries Corporation or the outright death of the Telecommunications workshop of the Ministry of Communications. The change mantra of the Buhari administration could find a deep chest of experience and expertise in the private sector to design and produce the Nigerian Voting Machine.
A company like Zinox Technologies Limited, the most integrated ICT firm in West Africa, has proved repeatedly that it possesses the competencies, clout and financial muscle to deliver outstandingly on huge national projects with breath taking time lines.
With a soaring growth in all performance indices and a 21st Century Management team, Zinox Technologies has consistently proven that IT knowledge and deployment of robust ICT infrastructures are the key drivers of the new economy.
At the eve of the 2007 elections, the company deployed 12,000 laptops in 2 weeks and in 2011 another 120,000 DDC Machines, in 3 weeks to salvage the National Voters’ register. These are solid referrals that talk of patriotism and exceptional indigenous capacity.
The Nnewi cluster with Innoson Group, the automotive manufacturer in the lead, can yield some solutions towards the fabrication of Nigerian Voting Machine.
This is 2016 and INEC must begin to mobilize the ICT manufacturing sector to produce this machine. INEC would get more accolades if, in addition to conducting a credible election, she midwife’s the production of a Nigerian Voting Machine.
I must warn that the technology world is aware of Nigeria’s fire brigade approach to the deployment of robust ICT infrastructure. There are foreign companies, without any presence in Nigeria, who will turn this bid into a hustle, in the last quarter of 2018, using Nigerian fronts.
These foreign companies know that all they need to win a huge contract in Nigeria may be a brief case, a ream of letter headed paper, and the Nigerian factor. INEC must insist on a truly Nigerian Voting Machine, designed and produced by Nigerians. This will greatly serve the letters and spirit of the Muhammadu Buhari change administration.
E voting is yet to be adopted by Nigeria but it is the only way forward to deepen the democratic experience.
There are challenges to the adoption and diffusion of e voting – top on the list is the willingness of the State to conduct a transparent and accountable election. Politicians could resist the transition to e-voting because their ability to maneuver the process would be greatly diminished. The Executive arm of Government or the National Assembly could initiate the transition to e-voting by proposing the revision of Section 52(1)(b) of the Electoral Act 2010, identified by Professor Jega, in 2012, as the major obstacle to the adoption of e-voting. It is heart- warming that in May 2016, Nigeria’s foremost IT personality, Leo Stan Ekeh, Chairman of Zinox, had an interactive session on e-voting with members of the House of Representatives during their retreat. Shortly after the House adopted e-voting as part of its internal processes. Many patriots see this as a step towards tackling Section 52(1)(b), a pilot program of some sort.
Electricity supply has become a national albatross – all sectors of the economy are cringing from its dark reality. There might just be no power to light up the polling booths, to operate the voting machines and internet connectivity. The erratic power supply is another reason why we must start the move to e-voting now.
The Nigerian electricity reality may require that each machine comes standard with two batteries and the booths lit up with a solar back-up.
We are lucky that the GSM phones are widely used at the grassroots including those we refer to as stark illiterates. Electronic Voting Machines are not likely to look stranger than the ATM machines, littering the urban centers, to most Nigerians.
However, an early Elections Enlightenment campaign would be necessary to achieve public acceptance of the Electronic Voting system, encourage conformity to its rules and processes and particularly debrief the grassroots political structures of politicians that impunity has no place in the new system.
This Public Enlightenment must go on simultaneously with the training of INEC staff, ad hoc staff inclusive. The training of ad hoc staff can be achieved by organizing regular lectures on e-voting at the orientation camps of all batches of the National Youth Service Corps.
The challenges are numerous but the thought of transparent elections in Nigeria – verifiable, free from violence and rancor, with limited number of litigations, not full of innocent errors and deliberate inaccuracies associated with paper voting – increases the appeal of e-voting.
The desire is for successive elections that enjoy the confidence of the people while producing credible Governments, imbued with integrity.
Such Governments can reach out for the sublime and the people would follow without counting the costs. Then and only then can Nigeria scream – Eureka!
Echika Ezuka, former Corporate Communications Adviser to the Zinox Group
E-Business
Kaspersky Transforms Threat Intelligence Reporting into an Interactive Content Hub

Easy interaction with exclusive Kaspersky reports, geo-filtering and actionable intelligence in a single click: expert insights on Advanced Persistent Threats (APT), Crimeware and Industrial Control Systems (ICS) threats are now available directly in Kaspersky Threat Intelligence Portal — with charts and visuals rendered inline.

In an era of increasingly sophisticated and frequent attacks, threat intelligence inevitably evolves into a business enabler that equips security teams with strategic advantage in their mission to back their company’s stability and growth.
Kaspersky, a recognised leader in threat intelligence, facilitates informed decision-making and proactive risk mitigation by introducing simplified access to actionable and relevant threat insights.
Kaspersky Threat Intelligence Reporting is a subscription-based service delivering over 200 in-depth analysis reports annually. These insights are compiled by Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Team, Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team and Threat Research experts through the continuous tracking of more than 900 threat actors and campaigns.
Following the update, all reports previously representing a library of static PDF files (that is more than 2000 exclusive Kaspersky reports published to date) are now structured and can be examined directly in the Kaspersky Threat Intelligence Portal. For offline use, the standard PDF download format remains available as well.
The update also introduces deeper integration within each report, featuring direct links to indicators of compromise (IoCs), detection rules (including YARA), and MITRE ATT&CK® techniques. Users can now perform a single-click drill-down into specific threat actors, malware families and Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) across diverse geographies and industries.
Smart geo-filtering streamlines investigations by prioritising content explicitly mentioning a selected country, followed by broader regional intelligence, giving analysts a complete geographic view in a single query.
Enhanced Kaspersky Threat Intelligence Reporting supports the following use cases:
- Customised content discovery: apply geo, industry and software filters to instantly retrieve a list of relevant reports.
- Exclusive intelligence: access the most recent incident investigation reports, including those without public disclosure, to understand the nature of an attack and identify the actions required for mitigation.
- Actionable intelligence extraction: extract and apply threat data from the reports and apply it across specific infrastructure to detect traces of compromise.
- In-depth Threat Lookup and contextual analysis: investigate suspicious indicators identified within the network and quickly determine if a specific IoC is linked to a related threat report.
“Empowering cybersecurity teams in their mission-critical daily work to ensure business resilience in a complex threat landscape. This is the main driver behind our ongoing visual and functional improvement initiative.
While updating Kaspersky Threat Intelligence Portal, we focused on refining the customer experience by optimising processes of active investigation, proactive incident monitoring and detailed mitigation techniques,” comments Alexander Mazikin, Head of Threat Intelligence Product Line at Kaspersky.
E-Business
Weebly Websites to Shut Down for Nigeria, 66 Other Countries from September

Weebly, US-based free, beginner-friendly, drag-and-drop website builder and eCommerce service, will no longer be available for customers in 67 countries, including Nigeria, after September 2026, according to an email seen by Nigeria CommunicationsWeek.

Weebly said it is “winding down” services in different nations “due to changes in regulation and to simplify our global operations”.
The firm released a timeline of gradual changes, to help existing users access their data before the site shuts down.
Starting June 29, customers of 67 countries were no longer able to publish any new pages.
September 27, 2026: Weebly websites will be unpublished.
Before this date, users should download site content and data. Follow these steps:
Go to Account Settings, click on My Data, and select Download My Data.
This will help you migrate your content to another website provider, or retain it.
Concerned about privacy? Ask Weebly to delete your data, through the Erase Data and Forget Me option under the My Data tab on your account page.
December 26, 2026: Last date of accessing Weebly account.
Until this date, you will have access to the account, although sites will be unpublished.
This period helps users move their site, domains, and data to another service.
Domain names can be moved to another registrar only after 60 days from the registration date.
According to the Weebly website, users must make sure that they do not make changes to your registrant contact information (email, phone number, first/last name), as this will lead to a 60-day registrar lock and prevent you from transferring your domain name.
Note that domain name transfers work differently for country-specific domains; users must contact Weebly’s support team for assistance.
How to unlock, transfer domain name
From your Weebly Dashboard, go to websites, and click on Domains, then select Manage Domain.
Disable registrar lock, get EPP authorisation code, and copy the full code.
Disabling registrar lock will also disable privacy protection. It is important to set privacy protection once again with the new registrar.
Follow the instructions for the newly chosen registrar as the rest of the transfer process will be managed by them
Why is Weebly winding down?
While the firm attributed it to “a change in regulation,” online users have argued that Square, which acquired Weebly in 2018, is pushing its platform ‘Square Online’.
Square is originally a US-based payment processor, and the firm says it has since evolved into the “largest business tech platform”.
It calls Square Online a “free online store” but clarifies that those who do not sell online can also use it to build their websites.
In an earlier support update for the Weebly Website Builder, Square Online was consistently referred to as a better alternative, although at the time, it was said that Square “has no plans to discontinue the Weebly website builder”.
Which countries will Weebly no longer be available in? Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Armenia, Aruba, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbadoa, Belarus, Benin and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Others are: Cambodia, Cameroon, Chile, Colombia, Congo, Costa Rica, and Côte d’Ivoire.
Also affected are: Ecuador, Egypt, Ethiopia, French Polynesia, Gabon, Georgia, Ghana, Guinea, Iceland, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Laos, Malaysia, Mauritius, Moldova, Montenegro, Morocco, Nepal and New Caledonia.
The rest are: Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Paraguay, Peru, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Singapore, South Korea, Suriname, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
E-Business
NOTAP to Commercialise University Research, Expands Patent Drive

National Office for Technology Acquisition and Transfer (NOTAP), has commenced the process of patenting and commercialisation of research works by universities and other research institutions in the country.

Dr. Obiageli Amadiobi, director general of NOTAP
Dr. Obiageli Amadiobi, director general of NOTAP, stated this in Abuja, during an interaction with journalists on her achievements since assuming office.
Speaking on the theme, “Strengthening Indigenous Capacity: NOTAP’s Drive for Technology Transfer, Local Content Development, and Innovative activities,” Amadiobi said the agency had involved both the academia and industry so that researchers can work on topics brought forward for commercialisation purpose.
“My minister is very intentional about this– very intentional about commercialisation of research results, which we have already submitted to him. They are meaningful researches, which we need to commercialise.
“We have established 69 intellectual property technology transfer offices in 69 universities that we are still counting. We have informed the vice chancellors of Nigerian universities to set up such offices and we will come and educate them on intellectual property and technology transfers.
“As we are doing this, we are also taking record of all the researchers of these universities and research centres and documenting them in a compendium.
“So, we have compendiums from the universities to us and we put them in a database. If you will recall, recently, the ministry, our supervising ministry, which is the Federal Ministry of Innovation, Science, and Technology, launched a programme titled Energise Commercialisation. This entirely was for commercialisation of all R&Ds,” she said.
On research Institutions carrying out research on areas of industry needs, she said, “NOTAP is bridging the gap between research and development with industry needs, “it is on our programme called the NITDF, NOTAP Industry Technology Transfer Fellowship. By this programme, we engage the universities and the industries, in what we call the triple helix. We liaise with the universities and the industries to sponsor, the industries will sponsor a Ph.D candidate in a Nigerian university to conduct relevant researches.
“They will provide the topics that they want researches for and such students will research on that with the assistance of the industries, because they wear the shoes, so they know where it pinches them. But usually, there are Ph.D candidates already established. This year alone, we certified about 15 of them to enter into this programme and they have gone into the various universities.
“And we are still looking for people to update some of the projects; the research topics we already have. But we are not getting enough persons to do the researches. So, we are going to do further advertisement to see if other candidates will come up.
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