A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Osita Chidoka, has called for an integrity test on the technology of the Independent National Electoral Commission for the 2023 general election.
Chidoka called on INEC partners to encourage the conduct of third-party testing of the electoral umpire’s technology platform to ascertain its robustness, integrity, and performance.
This was contained in a statement signed by his Special Assistant (Media), Ikechukwu Okafor, that quoted Chidoka who spoke at a conference on US Policy and Nigeria’s 2023 elections held on Friday, March 11, at the Kenney Auditorium at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Washington DC.
The former Minister of Aviation stressed that INEC’s improvement in the use of technology would be key to the success of the elections, adding that a third party test from consultancy firms would address the issues experienced during the Anambra governorship and the FCT council elections.
Chidoka also praised INEC’s drive to adopt technology and continuous innovation, describing the slow adoption by political parties as the weak link in the political process.
“The experiences of failures and downtimes affecting voter accreditation in Anambra and FCT municipal elections makes the testing and certification essential.
“It is worrisome that a government agency, INEC, is leading technology adoption while the political parties are lagging and making little or no effort to adopt technology in their processes,” Chidoka stated.
Commenting on the issues concerning the decline in voter turnout since the 2011 election, Chidoka argued that a decrease in voter turnout could be due to several factors.
According to the former minister, these factors may include the increasing number of voters in the register without a corresponding clean up to reflect death, double registration and other issues that contribute to the growth of the voter register.
He said, “INEC cannot determine Nigeria’s election voter turnout until the voter register is cleaned up through removal of dead people, de-duplication and clean up of the register started since 2011.”
The conversations at the conference focused on ways US policy can strengthen democratic institutions in Nigeria and help the country manage its security challenges, and help affirm commitment to civilian electoral rule in Nigeria.
Speakers at the conference included US academics such as Carl Levan, Peter Lewis, Darren Kew, US Deputy Assistant Secretary Bureau of African Affairs, Michael Gonzales and Brig. Gen Saleh Bala (retd).
Nigeria Civil Society had Dr Hussaini Abdu, Ayisha Osori, Uge Timipanipre and Cynthia Mbamalu who join online as panellists at the conference.
Other panellists included Bishop Mattew Kukah, Oge Onubogu, Kole Shettima and DJ Switch.
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