INEC advocates e-Transmission of results in 2023

Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) mulls to seek legal backing for electronic voting as from 2023, according to its chairman Prof Mahmud Yakubu.

Yakubu, who commenced the push for the 1999 Constitution and the Electoral Act to be amended to make provision for electronic collation and transmission of election results, said that the manual collation, which is enshrined in the laws, is too cumbersome and expensive.

The electoral boss, who spoke on preparations for future polls, announced that the next presidential election will take place on February 18, 2023.

Yakubu, who spoke at the inauguration of the House of Representatives Special Ad-hoc Committee on the Review of 1999 Constitution, urged them to speed up the process, stressing that the lawmakers have exactly 855 days to amend the law before the commencement of the general elections.

Speaking on the importance of technology, Yakubu said: “We have to also address our electoral process, which is manual. It is too expensive and cumbersome. The process of collating result is sometimes chaotic because the law says that you must write results manually and collate them manually right from the polling unit to the ward, from the ward to the local government, then, the state and from the state to the national level in the case of the presidential election.

“A lot has been achieved aboard with a simple application of technology. So, the encumbrances to the deployment of technology in the transmission of election results should be removed as part of this process.”

He therefore urged the legislators to expedite legislative action on the setting up of the Electoral Offences Tribunal for the trial of electoral offenders, adding that “There must be a way either by way of an amendment to the constitution to effectively penalize electoral offenders in the country. You cannot have a flourishing democracy in which laws are violated with impunity and nothing is done about that.

“That is why we must have an electoral offences tribunal. This has been recommended by several commissions and election observers. It was recommended by the Justice Uwais Commission.”