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From Obinna Odogwu, Awka
The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of the Anambra State ICT Agency, Chukwuemeka Fred Agbata, has given an account of how he watched over the November 8 Gubernatorial Election in the state, to ensure that it was transparently conducted.
Recently, he hosted select journalists in his office at the Light House in Awka, the state capital where he showcased the Situation Room he set up there; revealing that he equally had such in Isuofia, Governor Chukwuma Soludo’s hometown in Aguata Local Government Area of the state.
Agbata said that from the two Command and Control Centres, he was able to watch polling activities across the 5,720 polling units in the state and had all the results in real time.
Excerpts:
The November 8, 2025 Anambra State Governorship Election has come and gone; and we have seen how everything turned out. May we know how all these things came about, the intention, the experience and the outcome?
Anambra State works with the mantra which is everything technology, and technology everywhere; which basically fuels what happens. That mantra is what guides Mr. Governor; and that sort of fuels how we go about deploying technology. And of course, an election is a very complex process. And complex processes are really what you use technology to handle if need be. So, basically, the idea was how do we use technology to manage the process, such that Mr. Governor will be aware of what is happening across the 5,720 polling units in Anambra State. And so, I needed to find a way to use technology to make sure that incident reports, results and any other general information are easily captured. That way we had to come up with a strategy where we built the command-and-control centres, what you call the Situation Room in two different locations; one was primary and the other was secondary just in case if for any reason, the primary or the secondary goes down, we will have either of the two working. So, that was what we did; that was what we deployed. Thankfully to Mr. Governor; and of course, we were able to ensure that by evening we had all the results and all the IREV results as well; making sure that we are tracking all INEC was doing. We knew that it was already a done deal. The election was already a done deal. Even before that period, we also had a system where we did a number of private polling; and the data told us that…we are quite independent because we did that through a support group – Geeks and Founders Alliance for Soludo (GEFAS); that also gave us a deep amount of insight around the voting pattern, sentiments, analysis and a number of other spectrum; and with that, we knew that the election was won. It was really about what Mr. Governor and the Campaign Council was even just telling people was really around ensuring that we guard against voter apathy because it was won. The data was saying so. We had all sets of metrics that showed us that the election was won.
Why is it important that people should always look at data? You mentioned something when we were inside the hall, that past elections, there were no such data as you have now. Why is it important that continuously, people should be gathering data?
Like Mr. Governor would say, any data that cannot be measured will really fall flat. Data is the new gold; so, it’s important that we have data whether in the state or at the federal level. We need data for informed decisions. For the government, under the leadership of Mr. Governor, it was important to have data on this election and also see how to have a dashboard that inculcates data from previous elections. That way you can even understand the voting pattern of Ndi Anambra; you can understand what their issues are. For example, we know what the issue of the average Onye Anambra is today because data is saying so, from the polls we did and everything. So, we want to track all of these things and that will help make governance easier. Mr. Governor’s leadership style is one that gives the people value. And this speaks to his hypothesis that economic dividend; when you give the people enough value, it translates to political capital. That was his hypothesis and it was proven. And to prove that hypothesis and sustain it, you need data; which is why data was extremely important.
Within the six months of electioneering, we learned that a number of terabytes of data were spent on this project and same for calls too. We wish to know how many exactly?
As part of the process, we also deployed what you would call, under the support group – Geeks and Founders Alliance for Soludo (GEFAS), we deployed a mobile tech hub. We call it the GEFAS tech hub which was a set of Wi-Fi vehicles that would go around distributing free Wi-Fi and at the end of the six months period, we had given out over 20 terabytes of free data across the state; at multiple events. And hopefully, it will continue as well because we want that beyond the fixed ones, wherever Mr. Governor is having events, people must have access to Wi-Fi because we believe that it brings the consciousness. Broadband is a right; it is not supposed to be a favour or a luxury anymore. You need it to survive; especially in this era of AI and advanced technology. People have to have access to high-speed broadband. And if you look around the state, you would see more fibre optics, cables being built; just to ensure that there is capacity for the state because there is more digital awareness in the state; we want to ensure that the capacity keeps growing, keeps expanding, keeps increasing. So, that’s what you saw. We had a data report of over 160 pages for each local government; looking at the sentiments, the analysis and all the things. Over 200,000 Ndi Anambra were called independently as part of the private polling strategy. So, all of that happened in the last six months leading up to the election.
You said that from the data you were able to know the issues of Ndi Anambra. Can you tell us one or two of these issues?
Well, Mr. Governor always says it, every Onye Anambra wants roads. So, road tops all of them. We saw that. He has always said it. We saw that independently. Ndi Anambra wants roads.
From what you’ve done, and then the outcome of the election as announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), how would you rate your performance?
If you ask a student to rate themselves, they will rate themselves A. But I think we did a good job. But there is room for improvement but I think we did a relatively good job. Colleagues have been calling all over the world, extending their gratitude to that level of work. So, I will say that we did a good job. The idea is actually to make the electioneering and technology go hand in hand. Gone are the days when you had to struggle for data; gone are the days when a chief executive will have to struggle for data before they can make informed decisions. He should have all of those things with the snap of the finger. We have proven that this is possible. Hopefully, it can only get better.
