Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) o plans to seek legal backing for electronic voting as from 2023, according to Prof Mahmud Yakubu, tts chairman.
Yakubu, who began the push for the 1999 Constitution and the Electoral Act to be amended to make provision for electronic collation and transmission of election results,said that the manual collation, which is enshrined in the laws, is too cumbersome and expensive.
Yakubu, who spoke on preparations for future polls, announced that the next presidential election will take place on February 18, 2023.
The electoral boss, who spoke at the inauguration of the House of Representatives Special Ad-hoc Committee on the Review of 1999 Constitution, urged speed, saying the lawmakers have exactly 855 days to amend the law before the commencement of the general elections.
Emphasising the importance of technology, Yakubu said: “We have to also address our electoral process, which is manual. It is too expensive and cumbersome.The process of collating result is sometimes chaotic because the law says that you must write results manually and collate them manually right from the polling unit to the ward, from the ward to the local government, then, the state and from the state to the national level in the case of the presidential election.
“A lot has been achieved aboard with a simple application of technology. So, the encumbrances to the deployment of technology in the transmission of election results should be removed as part of this process.”
Urging the legislators to expedite legislative action on the setting up of the Electoral Offences Tribunal for the trial of electoral offenders, he said: “There must be a way, either by way of an amendment to the constitution to effectively penalize electoral offenders in the country. You cannot have a flourishing democracy in which laws are violated with impunity and nothing is done about that.
“That is why we must have an electoral offences tribunal. This has been recommended by several commissions and election observers. It was recommended by the Justice Uwais Commission.