Opposition party, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) has demanded that it is time for the country to embrace electronic voting in order to ensure the integrity of its elections and hand over the elections back to Nigerians instead of the judiciary.
In a statement issued on Sunday, by the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, ACN declared that with electronic voting, the overall cost of elections will be less and there will be stability in the polity.
Referring to the overwhelming deployment of security operatives during elections, the party added that the atmosphere of war usually associated with elections will disappear and the involvement of the security agencies will be de-emphasized.
Admitting that Section 52 (2) of the Electoral Act bans the use of electronic voting for the time being, ACN urged the National Assembly to move quickly to amend that part of the law while it called on the federal government to provide INEC with all the resources needed to make electronic voting a reality.
”While electronic voting is not a magic wand, it is the surest way for Nigeria to join the league of countries that have wiped out electoral fraud, which is the worst form of corruption. It is also the best way to hand over Nigeria’s elections back to Nigerians, instead of having the judiciary determine who wins what contest. Two years is long enough to achieve this,” ACN said.
The party noted that Ghana, which has organized perhaps the best elections in this part of the world, has realized it can no longer continue with manual voting; hence it did not wait for troubles associated with electoral malfeasance to break out before embracing electronic voting during its last general elections in December.
”It is not just enough for us to sit back in envy while the world hails our neighbor Ghana for being a model in electoral rectitude and participatory democracy. Let us ask ourselves what we need to do differently, to shed our toga of electoral fraud and brigandage”
”Yes, there were some hiccups during the last elections in Ghana, which were conducted with electronic voting. But Ghana quickly moved to correct whatever problems came up. The system also allowed Ghana to extend voting without fearing that ballot boxes will be hijacked or stuffed,”
ACN said it is true that Ghana’s last presidential election that was conducted with electronic voting is currently being challenged in court, ”to the best of our knowledge, that’s the only case being contested in court since the elections ended.”
”It is totally unacceptable and indeed an anomaly for a nation of 160 million people to hand over the determination of its elections to a few ‘wise’ men and women on the bench.”
“One result of Nigeria’s successive failed elections is that it has brought corruption to the judiciary. It is time to free judges to do their duties and allow Nigerians to play more roles in determining who governs them,” it said.
The party pledged its support for e-voting stating that ”we assure INEC of our full support towards using electronic voting in 2015.”
It also appealed to other political parties, Civil Society Organizations and all Nigerians to join it in pushing for a system that will “eliminate the role of thugs and side line vote thieves during our elections, in addition to making our elections free, fair and credible” the statement read.
