BY Aliyu Dangida
HOTPEN – The Director General, National Information Technology Development Agency, (NITDA) Kashifu Inuwa, has said the rightful administration of elections contributes greatly to the growth of democracy and civic development in our nation.
Inuwa stated this in Abuja while delivering a paper at a hybrid symposium of the Nigeria e-Government Summit 2022 themed: “Promoting e-Government in Election Year for Improved Governance”.
The DG who was represented by Mr. Bernard Ewah, the acting Director, e-Government Development and Regulation Department said, “e-voting constitutes a very important aspect of ICT-enabled democratic governance. It generally aims at increasing participation of citizens in the electoral process and improving the outcomes of elections by addressing challenges associated with traditional voting practices”.
The NITDA boss explained that the e-voting technologies will support one or more of the major phases of the electoral processes from the registration stage in the pre-voting phase to voting, balloting, verification and or calculating after voting.
Inuwa affirmed that e-governance has become an important tool in enhancing citizens’ participation, monitoring, evaluating government projects, and guaranteeing government accountability and transparency as well as transferring information from one sector to another.
He added, “Participatory democracy is one of the major requirements for achieving e-governance, particularly, where the majority of the citizens are disappointed with the electioneering or democratic processes or government. For successful adoption of e-voting and e-government, grassroots mobilization through e-democracy should be encouraged.”
He revealed that NITDA has an e-Government Master Plan that promotes the use of e-government at sub-national and grassroots, adding that, so far, Plateau, Benue, Jigawa, Ogun and Nasarawa states have benefited from this initiative.
NITDA boss further stated that the adoption of electronic voting and transmission of results has the potential of drastically reducing the prospect of electoral violence because as long as the polling centers are well secured, political thugs will have little or no influence over proceedings as the results could be transmitted within minutes to the collation center.
He concluded that as the 2023 general elections draw nearer, electronic voting would play a paramount role as E-voting is becoming a standard in electoral processes around the world and Nigeria is poised to improve its ranking on the global e-governance index as well as toe the line of countries like Estonia, Brazil, India, Philippines and Australia who have all introduced e-voting at various levels in their political systems.