APC Chieftain, Abiodun Ajiboye, says Nigeria is not ready for real time transmission of election result due to poor infrastructure.
Ajiboye said this while speaking on Arise TV on Monday, February 9. In his words
“Transmitting election results electronically is the function of manner of voting. If you vote manually, and you collate results, how do you then transmit electronically real-time? It’s just not possible. We can’t even afford it. Even if we wish to, we can’t afford it,
Do the telecom operators have that capability? Do we have enough electricity to undertake that responsibility in Nigeria?
Is the infrastructure of telecom companies sufficient enough to undertake such exercise?
The last election we had, the INEC server was attacked over a million times.
So what they’re saying is that we should put the electoral process within the vulnerability of hijackers, causing a lot of confusion. This is what I see them pushing.”
He noted that manual processes remain central to elections.
“There are manual parts of election. And what can happen, like it has always happened, is you vote, and they count the votes there, the party agents append their signatures on the paper, the paper can then be scanned and transmitted anyhow you want,” he noted.
Ajiboye insisted that Nigeria is not yet capable of electronic voting or real-time result transmission:
“A man is only able to do what he is capable of. We have no capability to do electronic voting or real-time transmission at this time.
America does not even do real-time transmission. Go and check. We don’t even have telecom provided for some rural communities. Some rural communities don’t even have electricity. You’re trying to disenfranchise a lot of people by pushing for what is not possible. Technologically, it is not possible. Stop stampeding the Senate and National Assembly into getting into something very difficult, that will put everybody in a mess at the end of the day.”
