The President of the Nigeria
Computer Society (NCS) and Co-Centre Leader, World Bank-Designated Centre of
Excellence in Software Engineering, Professor Adesola Aderounmu, has said that Information and
Communication Technology (ICT) holds the future of credible elections in the
country, reports ITRealms.
In a keynote at the 5th Covenant
University Conference on e-Governance in Nigeria, recently, Prof. Aderounmu insisted
that to guarantee the credibility of future election process, it must be
ICT-driven process.
He also urged Nigerians to beginning
to form the electoral culture of institutionalizing ICT in this area.
He lamented that elections in
Nigeria hitherto have been that of violence and discord.
“Since the dawn of politics in post-colonial Nigeria, our
elections have mostly been a tug of war, riddled with violence, rigging and all
manners of complications,” he said.
Stressing that democratic experience has been progressively retrogressive,
essentially because the electoral process has been consistently defective.
“Free and fair elections in our part of the world have been rare
like an exotic treasure that you only find by luck. In short, ours has been a
history of traumatic electoral misadventures that have been part of indices
defining us as a third world country lagging behind the advanced democracies of
the West,” he said.
Prof. Aderounmu noted the importance of highlighting the existence of a genuine need for ICT
systems for development in sub-Sahara Africa.
“In
particular, we have to distinguish elections as the best opportunity to encourage
political leaders to promote innovation in the polity. So, using ICT to elect
credible leaders could motivate successful and satisfied politicians to encourage
emerging governments to adapt the innovations to mainstream development and
governance.
“As
the 2019 elections draw closer, there is no doubt that putting in place
relevant ICT infrastructure now for the application of adaptable technology in our
electoral processes will go a long way to ensure transparency and credibility
of the elections.
“It
is a welcome development that the leveraging of technology had started, even if
rudimentary, with the last 2015 elections that ushered in the present administration
in Nigeria.
“For instance,
the application of technology for biometric registration of voters, the
issuance of smart permanent voters card (PVCs) to voters and voter verification
and authentication using the smart card reader, has helped the infiltration of
ICT into the electoral process.
“So
also was the idea to scan and upload all voting result sheets for all the
elections on a database, which was made accessible to all stakeholders for some
months after the 2015 elections.
“All
these formative adaptations of technology with the 2015 elections are
commendable, but there is still a long way to go with our future elections. Let
us now go into specifics on how ICT can transform our future electoral
processes and elections,” he said.
Chuks Egbune/GEE
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