Ahead of INEC, Kaduna to use electronic voting machine for LG elections

Says elections in Nigeria can be safely conducted electronically

KADUNA, Nigeria – Even while Nigerian lawmakers are comfortable with manual transmission of electronic results in the 21^st century, the Kaduna State Governor has gone ahead of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC to deploy electronic voter machines for the Local Government elections coming up September 4, 2021.#electronicvoting

The elections will be conducted with the voter machines, which have been integrated with voters card and the results electronically transmitted. Speaking during the electronic voter sensitization programme in Kaduna, Dr. Hadiza Sabuwa Balarabe, Deputy Governor of Kaduna State, represented by Commissioner of Education Dr.Shehu Usman Muhammad said across the state, voters found it easy to use the electronic voting machines, thereby proving that user interface is not a problem and that elections in Nigeria can be safely conducted electronically.

“However, the deployment of electronic voting was not without its challenges, which had everything to do with the baser aspects of the attitudes of some politicians”, he said, adding that INEC was unable to loan us its card readers for the 2018 local government elections, leaving the elections officials with no option than to rely on manual accreditation.

“We commend the Kaduna SIECOM for pioneering electronic voting for election into government offices. We welcome the efforts that the Commission has made to reconfigure the electronic voting machines to integrate the card reader into it and to ensure that a card can only be used once for voting”, he said.

According to him, all citizens that wish to see democratic governance at the local level have a duty to ensure that people are galvanised to vote and that they understand the electoral process and the steps required to enable them to vote easily and freely.

He called on all the political parties and civic organisations in the state to help make the campaigns and the local government elections a fair and peaceful celebration of democracy

He said that under the leadership of Malam Nasir El Rufai, the Kaduna State Government has demonstrated its commitment to a viable, democratically elected and responsive local government system.

“This government has initiated several reforms to help strengthen the capacity of the 23 local government councils in the state to deliver services at the grassroots level. The reforms have also addressed how leaders at the local government level emerge.

“In 2018, the Kaduna State Government introduced electronic voting for the local government elections of May and June 2018. This required considerable investments, and we consider it a worthwhile deployment of technology towards ensuring that votes count and that the results that are declared reflect the actual preferences that the voters expressed”, he said.