INEC Introduces New Innovation For Free, Fair Election

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has disclosed plan to introduce new innovation to the forthcoming gubernatorial elections in Kogi and Bayelsa states.

The commission planned using e-collation system that will transmit election results from the polling units. This will be done with the hope to ensure easy and transparent collation of results.

This disclosure was made by INEC’s director of information and communication technology, Engr. Chidi Nwafor on Wednesday, August 26, in Abuja during the opening ceremony of 2015 Engineering Week and Annual General Meeting organised by the Abuja branch of Nigerian Society of Engineers, Leadership reports.

Nwafor hinted said that aside of the introduction of e-collation, the commission would use permanent voters card, card readers and other improved system that will ensure free and fair.

He said: We are putting a system that when the results come from the polling units to the ward, the ward assistant who already has a software that has been developed and tested will compute it in the developed software which will give scores of political parties and the percentage scored.

“With this, the elections in Bayelsa and Kogi will be difficult to rig, so Nigerians should expect better governorship election since there will be an improvement on the card reader.”

In his presentation, titled ‘Technological Innovations in 2015 General Election, the Role of Engineers’ he said that despite the successes recorded in 2015 general elections, the commission could not implement e-voting as it was not backed by the law.

He stated that the success achieved in 2015 general elections could be attributed to the resilience of the former chairman of INEC, Prof. Attahiru Jega to digitalise the voters register and the introduction of permanent voter’s card.

Meanwhile, there is indication that the acting chairperson of INEC, Amina Zakari might soon be confirmed as the substantive chairperson of the commission.