The President of Ebira Peoples Association (EPA), Dr Abdulrahman Musa Adeiza, has said that there is a need to utilise the advantages of technology to modify the electoral process of the country.
Speaking with Tribune Online in Lokoja, Kogi State on Sunday, he noted that so that electorate can even cast their votes electronically so that the issue of queuing up will not be there again.
According to him, this would invariably end electoral violence as people can vote from their homes, offices, market and other places, stressing that this is achievable through the commitment of the government and gradually the country will perfect the electoral process.
“This will go a long way in reducing the high rate of violence often experienced during elections, the issue and complaints of ballot snatching will be permanently solved.
“We are calling on everybody to be peace-loving and ensure that we don’t allow a single incident to go deep down to possibly divide the entire state. We are united in calling our people to maintain the current peace and to support the winner of the election so that the government can be successful in delivering the dividend of democracy to the people which is key in any Democratic setting.
“If the government is not successful, it is the entire state that will carry the burden and the burden as a result of failure of administration is never limited to any particular tribe, but so far we observed that the winner of the election which is the APC has a sizeable proportion of supporters across the three senatorial districts meaning that the victory can not be limited to a certain set of people or tribe alone and to this extent, we believe that if the government indulge in peace measures, the entire state will be in a position to initiate a lot of development and we believe that the current government is in a position to ensure the development of the state.
“I want to believe that our governor Alhaji Yahaya Bello will find a way of creating a focus for the entire state where eventually the overriding effect will be the state instead of primordial issues of where I come from and when the overriding issue arises it will be enough to galvanise the interest of the people for the advancement of the state and generally development will be achieved,” he noted.
He, therefore, sympathised with those that sustain one injury or the other during the election and and also commensurate with those who lost their loved one during the election as he pointed out that “whatever we are having as a democracy in Nigeria today, it is still at a teething stage and a lot of changes need to be done to moderate and modify it”.