The Chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu has expressed apprehension over possible interference with the outcome of the 2019 general elections using advanced technology, given increasing incidence of election meddling through the use of technology in many countries.
Prof. Yakubu stated this on Monday in Abuja at the opening ceremony of a conference attended by the Electoral Management Bodies of the ECOWAS member countries and the South African Development Community member states. He called on African countries to tackle the threat in order to protect democracy in the continent.
The INEC boss who spoke on ‘Opportunities and Challenges in the Use of Technology in Elections: Experiences from West and Southern Africa,’ assured that INEC was working to ensure free, fair and credible elections.
“Given the high stakes of conducting elections in developing countries, electoral commissions must understandably be worried about the twin issues of communication and security especially in situations where data reside with and is directly transmitted to the tallying centres through offshore vendors rather than exclusively controlled within national boundaries by election monitoring bodies.
In addition, we have to contend with the disturbing but rapidly increasing incidence of election meddling through the deployment of counter-technology on a global scale by state and non-state actors. Already, election management bodies in our sub-regions and beyond have deployed technology in one way or the other to improve on the processes, administration and outcome of elections.
These include: training and capacity building for electoral officials, promotion of inclusivity in the electoral process like youths, women, persons with disabilities, internally displaced persons; biometric registration of voters, delineation of electoral constituencies and geo-referencing of existing as well as the creation of new polling units.
Others include: the establishment of robust electronic databases, accreditation of voters during elections, actual voting and the speedy and more accurate collation and transmission of results.”
