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A former All Progressive Congress (APC) National Legal Adviser and former Chairman of the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) Dr Muiz Banire, SAN, yesterday urged the National Assembly to urgently take steps towards legalising electronic voting.
Banire advised President Muhammadu Buhari to assent to the eventual bill on the issue, in the country’s interest.
He reasoned that this was a step towards guaranteeing a credible elections from 2023, and warned that without it, Nigeria stands “a terrible chance” of losing more frustrated young people to the Diaspora.
In a statement, he urged the government to learn from the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), which, despite allegations of vote manipulation, had made steady progress with each election, since it introduced electronic voting.
“My view, over time, has been that a mixture of both manual and electronic modes be adopted in Nigeria’s elections. My position is premised on the fact that the Internet availability in Nigeria is still relatively poor, particularly the bandwidth. There is hardly any significant coverage in the rural areas and the country cannot afford to exclude this sizeable number of Nigerians from exercising their franchise,” Banire said.
He said this factor played out in the 2019 general election in which the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) “that had earlier boasted of deploying electronic voting across the country suddenly realized that it was just being unduly ambitious in view of the limitations confronting availability of Internet in most parts of the country.
He noted that electronic voting “will enable more informed people to participate in elections as opposed to the present system where majority of the voters determining the leadership of the country are largely uninformed, endangering all of us.
He added further that electronic voting will also help to ensure diaspora voting by Nigerians abroad, who “deserve to be allowed to contribute to our democratic evolution considering the amount of money they remit home annually, which runs into billions of dollars.
