By David Onimisi Lawani
Following the controversy surrounding electronic transmissions of election results, the Executive Director, Yaga Africa, Samson Itodo has noted that it is not in the power of the Independent Nationa Electoral Commission, INEC, to determine network coverage of the electioneering process saying that it is not enough to say the Commission cannot transmit election results using different methods.
Itodo gave this clarification when he featured on the AIT Kakaaki morning show noting that the National Communications Commission, NCC had said it has 0very 100 million connected lines and with that, the INEC can deploy its technology by using the varied approaches.
He said INEC can transmit results using 2G or 3G SMS technology, however, challenged the NCC to be able to tell Nigerians the dark spots percentage that will make it impossible for the Commission to transmit election results.
According to him: it ” is not in INEC powers to determine the network coverage. But I ask you, tell me across the country today, where is it that you can’t send SMS from a phone to another phone?
“The NCC said they have 100 million connected phone lines across Nigeria. Yet there may be dark spots when you don’t have network coverage and I do recognize that fact. But this is the practice and it depends on the technology INEC is deploying.
“The truth is that when they say 2G or 3G, you can send SMS using 2G. So you can transmit results using SMS technology. In place and I stand to be corrected and challenged, tell me the percentage of the dark spots we have in the country whether it is statistically significant to prevent us from deploying electronic transmission of results”, he said.
The ED said further that there are several options available for the Commission to adopt citing the example of Edo and Ondo where the party agents had to accompany the presiding officers to the mountains for the network so that results can be uploaded to the portal.
He said everything should be done for proper harmonization of the House of Representatives Committee, noting that the discrepancies in some sections of the provisions should never be allowed to succeed.
He said: ” And, so there are several options available to INEC. It can use SMS technology. It can use scan image transmission of results. But I see that if you look at Edo and Ondo where Election Result Viewing, EVF, the portal was deployed, what happened was that in places where there was no connectivity, after the election the presiding officers used the Zipad and took pictures of the form ECA forms and went to areas where there was network connectivity with the result.
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” What I consider so fascinating particularly in Edo and Ondo was party agents and citizens followed the presiding officers upto the mountains where there was internet connectivity and ensure that they uploaded the results on the portal. That is the level of vigilance that we expect from citizens. And it shows that citizens embrace this technology and it will deepen the integrity of the process.
“So, I am making a public interest argument in this case that it serves the interest of the public. It serves the interest of our electoral process for the harmonization committee to adopt the position of the House of Representatives on this particular proposal because there are some positions the house took among the 16 or 17 provisions where there were discrepancies or disparities that are anti-police”, he stated.
