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By Sixtus Ekwo
No matter how we look at it, information technology (IT) remains a vital part of the transparent election process in modern democracies. As Nigeria gears up for the pivotal 2023 presidential polls, the application of technology will play a critical role in ensuring that the Nigeria election is free and fair.
Using IT in political communication such as convincing the voters in the form of dirty politics, and selling the accomplishments of individual politicians are common features of digital messaging in politics and elections. Social media is one of the tools being employed in the modern IT age to achieve this form of communication, especially with the availability and access to mobile phones by many people.
However, the issue remains on how to take advantage of the benefits of IT to ensure a free and fair election. Rigged elections have contributed to the economic woes and hardship facing Nigerians. Stopping this plague and terrible idiosyncrasy affecting our election depends on the full utilization of IT in our elections. People should have access to secured databases and infrastructure, and with apps on their mobile phones should know if their votes are being counted or trashed and replaced with already typed result sheets by those who claim that they own Nigeria more than others.
There are ways that information technology could help to secure the administration of elections in Nigeria. First, Nigeria’s election technology infrastructure should be made up of databases of registered voters, data files for each ballot, servers, storage, and networks. There should be respective election wards’ voting machines and software, cybersecurity products, equipment to process all the voting ballots, and the ability of Nigerians in the diaspora to vote as absentee ballots and statistical models to forecast outcomes. If these are not already existing, then we need to have them, if we want to achieve a free and fair election in Nigeria.
As stated earlier, most Nigerians now have mobile phones and with mobile apps, voters can decide or choose who they want to vote for based on the issues they care about. Most importantly, voters can cast their vote on a mobile app that uses blockchain to store the ballots until election night.
Secondly, it could help to curb election insecurity and mistrust. To ensure that Nigerians have confidence in the outcome of the election and reduce the level of mistrust in the election process, there is a need to have audits and verification technologies. This technology will help in detecting or preventing voter fraud and could play a role in untangling the results of controversial elections including providing necessary evidence in potential election challenges in the courts.
Also, there is a need to have an Election Verification Network (EVN) based on biometrics or forensics that will help in developing a set of open-source statistical and computational tools that use pattern recognition to help determine whether votes have been tampered with. For example, a free, open-source toolkit like Microsoft ElectionGuard, allows voters and third-party organizations to verify election results and confirm that their votes were counted correctly. That tool hasn’t been widely deployed yet, but it could be part of the election infrastructure in the future for Nigerians. Such open-source systems that provide transparency into voting verification will be critical in providing confidence to Nigerian voters. At least, we will have an opportunity of knowing when our votes are being stolen or counted.
The use of voting scanners is another method. Nigeria should start comprehensive programs to digitize all of their paper records and link those to specific voter files. In these programs, elections officials can use electronic scanners to capture and digitize voter signatures, paper correspondence, and voter registration forms, all of which can then be linked to individual voter files for quick reference. Although this technology might be expensive, if our leaders can leave some “change” from the money they are stealing, this can be achieved. Digitizing paper voting records can help election officials manage the piles of paper records they maintain for all of their voters. Fewer paper records require less warehouse space, and digitized records can be saved on secondary storage media if the primary document is unavailable or destroyed.
Nigeria may consider the use of Geographical Information System (GIS) and Geographical Positioning System (GPS). GIS and GPS technology have been used for so many years to present information in a geographically specific format and for crime prevention. Carrying ballot boxes to unknown areas and stuffing them with illegal ballots are terrible crimes that perpetrators of this act should be held accountable for. However, with GIS technology, election officials can update the voter registration software street index and election ward information for different voters. There are other benefits of using GIS that election officials can leverage for increased efficiency in election administration. For example, GIS and GPS technology when combined can be used to track where voters are traveling to vote and vote centers on Election Day. This tracking capacity allows election officials to efficiently monitor the distribution of electoral materials on Election Day. Again, GPS technology can be used to track drivers as they deliver electoral materials to the polling places or transport election results from the wards to the collation office. This is to ensure that those drivers that are saboteurs can be tracked and charged to court.
Overall, these technologies have the potential to safeguard the electoral system and ensure that ballots are properly processed. However, some caveats could be associated with the Nigeria election system. One persistent concern could be ransomware attacks on voter registration databases. Such has happened in US and Nigeria should have a proactive approach by having a robust cybersecurity team that will implement Firewall technology. This will prevent voting machines from being vulnerable and attacked by cybercriminals. Understandably, Nigeria has a long way to go but as the saying goes “the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.” If some of our politicians could stop stealing our money and carting them away to overseas banks, we can have enough resources to effect these changes. Lastly, if we realized that rigged elections lead to youth restiveness that is connected to unemployment, lack of basic and inadequate infrastructural facilities, and social amenities, it becomes obvious that having a secured election using information technology is a sine qua non to Nigeria’s economic development.
Dr. Sixtus Ekwo (Ph.D. Information Technology) is CEO, SIXTECH CONSULTING LLC Charlotte NC USA. Sixtus can be reached via Email: [email protected]
