Former national commissioner of di Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Mustapha Lecky, don say Nigeria never ready, technically, to adopt mandatory real-time electronic transmission of election results.
Lecky talk dis one on Friday during Politics Today programme for Channels Television. According to am, di current pressure to upload results instantly from polling units no dey make sense because Nigeria still dey do manual voting with paper ballots, not electronic voting.
“E no really make sense to me say we dey talk about instantaneous transmission of results live as e dey happen for polling area,” Lecky talk.
He explain say before any result fit upload, dem must first manually count and verify am for polling unit in di presence of party agents. He add say di EC8A form, wey party agents sign, na di most important document for any election result.
Lecky also point out say di current system, including INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) and di Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), don already provide enough transparency if dem implement am well.
According to am, Nigeria still lack di needed nationwide infrastructure, especially reliable mobile network coverage for many rural polling units, to support real-time electronic transmission without risk of failure or cyber attack.
“For electronic transmission, we no ready. We no technically ready,” he emphasise, warn say forcing di system without proper preparation fit expose di electoral process to bigger danger, especially for country wey digital strength still weak.
Lecky advise INEC make dem focus on improving di tools wey dey already, add say even countries wey don develop well still dey face challenges when dem use technology for elections.
