Nigeria’s hope to have laws that will enable electronic voting for faster collation and announcement of all election results may be completely dashed as the Senate prepares to work on the amendment of the Electoral Act ahead of the 2023 general elections.
This was as Chairman, Senate Committee on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Senator Kabiru Gaya, said Nigeria is not ripe for electronic voting due to requisite infrastructure deficit especially on insulating the data to be gathered from the field for collation and the consequent announcement of the winner.
Gaya hinged said his reason is based on alleged infiltration of November 8, 2016, presidential elections of the United States.
According to him, the allegation suggested that the results were tampered with.
“This was a pointer to Nigeria’s unpreparedness to adopt the electronic voting format for her future elections in the not too distant future because Nigeria does not have the quality of infrastructure the United States has yet it would itself vulnerable to hackers.”
Senator Gaya, who said this to Tribune Online in his office in Abuja, said had the President signed the Electoral Act as passed by the Eighth Assembly, it would have been impossible to conduct the February 23, 2019, presidential election that returned Muhammadu Buhari as President of Nigeria and the other national and state elections conducted in the last election season.
Senator Gaya, a former Kano state governor said Nigeria will only conduct electronic voting when it has tackled the issue of infrastructure to support electronic voting and transfer of results.
According to Gaya: “After the amendment to the electoral act by the Eighth Assembly, the President made some observations in the last amendment which was hurriedly passed in the eighth Senate at that time if the President had signed the bill, it would have been difficult for us to have a free, fair and credible elections.
“The bill is saying transmission of result electronically. We know it affected the United States elections, there were some rumours that there were interferences by some other countries talk less of Nigeria, a developing nation.
“We are not fully developed in that electronic enhancement. Therefore we need to build that aspect and, we are happy that the President did not sign that. We will look at the issues and work on it. We will do it when we are capable of doing so.
“Dearth of infrastructure will make it difficult for us to be able to do that, so we have to avoid any kind of make sure that we have a way of checking and re-checking to avoid any kind of malpractice through the electronic transfer,” Gaya stated.
He pointed out that the Senate will be looking at the various issues around the hill and tweak them to meet Nigerians expectation of free, fair and credible elections.
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He said the experience of all election stakeholders, as well as that of the Commission itself, will be relied upon to make legislative inputs in the electoral Act amendment bill before the Senate.
“We really need to look at the Act so that we can do an amendment on the existing Act based on the experience we had in the last elections, the experience we went through as voters, the experience we went through as participants in the election, the experience that INEC went through as the umpire of the elections.
“We will put all those experience together and come out with legislative laws that will help with smooth fair and free elections.
It would be recalled that President Muhammadu Buhari had withdrawn assent to the bill on the ground that certain provision of the amended bill if assented to would be in conflict with the Nigerian Constitution.
He also observed that rights of candidates to seek redress where such candidate believed the process was not free and fair was also infringed upon.
In the report presented to the Eighth Senate, the then Chairman, Senate Committee on INEC, Senator Suleiman Nazif, it reads in part that: “The amendment to the sequence of the elections in Section 25 of the Principal Act may infringe on the constitutionally guaranteed discretion of INEC to organise, undertake and supervise all elections in Section 15 (a) of the Third Schedule of the Constitution.
The report further stated: “That the amendment to Section 138 of the Principal Act to delete 2 crucial grounds upon which an election may be challenged by candidates unduly limits the rights of candidates in elections to a free and fair electoral review process; and
“That the amendment to Section 152 (3)- (5) of the Principal Act may raise constitutional issues over the competence of the National Assembly to legislate over Local Government elections.
The report surmised thus: “Delete Sections 25 and 152 (3)-(5) in the proposed Bill based on the President’s observations;
“Retain Section 138 (c) and (d) as contained in the Principal Act Further amend Section 49 by including a new subsection (3) which provides that where a Smart Card Reader deployed for accreditation of voters fails to function in any unit and a new card reader is not deployed, the election in that unit shall be cancelled and another election shall be scheduled within 24 hours”; and
Amend Section 140 to include a new subsection (c) which states that “Where the election is postponed due to omission of a political party’s name or logo, the Commission’s Officer responsible for such printing of party names or logos commits an offence and is liable to a fine of Two Million Naira (N2, 000,000) or imprisonment for 2 years or both,” the report stated.
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