Voting buying has become a disturbing feature in elections in Nigeria, as observed most recently in the November 6 Anambra governorship election. However, speaking with PREMIUM TIMES a few weeks before that election, the Resident Electoral Commissioner for Rivers State, Obo Effanga, says the phenomenon also indicates an improvement in the electoral process. Follow his argument and other observations in this excerpt from the first part of the interview.
PT: The National Assembly has now passed the Electoral Act Amendment Bill. One of the provisions allows INEC to transmit election results electronically.Yes. The commission has actually come up with a paper on that. They made the argument and said this is what we are capable of doing. We have done it before. For instance, what we did with elections, from last year, you would see that there is a process of transmission that has happened, electronic transmission of results.
Then you also have the collation officers who are brought in from the tertiary institutions, mainly the universities. There is a level of expectation you would have in a normal society about somebody who is a lecturer in the university; that the person acts with the highest level of integrity, especially when it comes to election which determines who gets elected and governs.
But you see, what I also tell people is that there is so much that technology can help you achieve – it is definitely better than manual. But at the end of the day, the success of it will also depend on the humans who are involved in the process. And the humans would include the electoral officials themselves, the political parties, the security agencies and the attitudes. I don’t want to sound like I am looking at doom.
In terms of conduct of elections, deployment of personnel and materials to location, that is an INEC decision. We let them know the locations we are going to use and they now inform us of how many personnel they are going to deploy to those places. Now, at a polling unit, let’s start from there. At every polling unit, the person that calls the shot is the presiding officer. He determines how the arrangement is made and who comes to vote, so he manages all of that.
Nah. It's still thesame .
Nigeria Latest News, Nigeria Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Source: PremiumTimesng - 🏆 3. / 78 Read more »
Source: Daily Trust - 🏆 13. / 51 Read more »
Source: LeadershipNGA - 🏆 4. / 77 Read more »
Source: GuardianNigeria - 🏆 1. / 94 Read more »
Source: GuardianNigeria - 🏆 1. / 94 Read more »
Source: SaharaReporters - 🏆 9. / 63 Read more »