Equity, elections, and electronics, By Doyin Salami & Uddin Ifeanyi

The din of the protests over the Senate’s earlier decision drowned out the fact that INEC currently runs a hybrid system that uploads results, even as the paper trail continues to be collated by hand. In those sections of the country where patchy internet coverage could delay the digital upload of election results, could we, for instance, leverage Elon Musk’s Starlink? Whatever our preferred options, there are cost implications, of course.

It is neither odd nor surprising that the Senate’s earlier rejection (as part of its passage of the Electoral Act Amendment Bill) of the mandatory electronic transmission of polling results by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has continued to generate impassioned debate. On the plus account, the consequences (nearly all positive) of free and fair voting processes in this country are repeatedly underscored by the skulduggery that our politicians are inclined to indulge in. For this reason, important segments of civil society are biased in favour of anything that could reduce, if not eliminate completely, the exercise of arbitrary impulses in our electoral system — especially “incidents of result manipulation, over-voting and falsification during collation”. The digitisation and digitalisation of our electoral processes promise this possibility. Thus, at the very least, our goal as a democracy must be to fully transmit polling results in real-time someday. When we may realise this goal (over the short-, medium-, or long-term) is open to debate.

Given the domestic financial services sector’s extensive embrace of digital technology for the delivery of its services, the Senate’s earlier reluctance to use digital technology to improve voters’ ease of access to and convenience of use of election resources correctly raised eyebrows. The arguments for the digitalisation of our election processes are as strong as evidence of how far the country has proceeded down the road to online, real-time data transmission. If you transferred funds electronically in Nigeria, you would de rigueur receive an SMS alert confirming your transaction. If you conducted the same transfer in the UK, you would not. Same day settlement of even the most rudimentary financial transactions (T+0) is an outcome that places our financial services at the forefront of technology enablement, even when it originally emerged as an attempt to leap-frog infrastructure constraints.

However, there are downsides to making the real-time electronic transmission of voting results mandatory, immediately. When last did you try to place a call from Ikeja in Lagos to Yashikira in Kwara State? Whether VoIP-based or GSM-based, the experience is a nightmare, often compounded by how urgent the call is. Is there any exercise in a democracy more urgent than the regular exercise of voters’ choice? In answering this question, much of the ongoing debate about the Senate’s decision searches for a good leg to stand on. While real time electronic transfer and transmission of results are a desirable outcome, we ought not to push the consideration of its practicality across the entire country to the back burner. Lagos, Abuja, and our other big cities cannot be the yardstick for how efficiently we have embraced digital technologies. In fact, this yardstick falters in important regions of the country due to inadequate infrastructure. By the way, even our top cities, as we know from experience, are inadequately served.

A far more useful contribution to this debate and to improving the country’s fortunes at the polling booth must include solutions that will guard against the possible disenfranchisement of large swathes of the population (and resulting chaos) were INEC to encounter on polling days the snafus and fubars (including the tendency for opposition polling agents in key states to disappear ahead of elections) that Nigerians run into daily in their use of the digital infrastructure currently in place.

Our reading of the pitfalls leading up to the kerfuffle over the Senate’s passing of the bill include a process failure, and the suboptimal responses of key players in the political space. First, the process failure. Whereas the Senate may have conducted an objective appraisal of the infrastructure that would support the online, real-time nationwide transmission of voting results, it touched a third rail of politics in the process. The consultations that comprised this appraisal were not seen to have been done. Against an INEC heatmap of polling stations across the country, internet service providers, and operators of shared communications infrastructure ought to have been invited (at a public hearing) to confirm their ability to ensure reliable real-time e-transfer and e-transmission of electoral results across the country. And where current infrastructure enablement would not do, to establish how much needs to be invested in the space to make such coverage possible (and what government could do to enable such investment) ahead of the next election.

The national aversion for fact-based conversation and decision-making is legendary. And in this case, this spectre haunts beyond the hallowed chambers of the National Assembly. Notable opposition politicians have jumped on the Senate’s blooper as is their wont, assured that by riding this hobbyhorse to death they create strong evidence, in advance, of the incumbent federal government’s intention of rigging the forthcoming elections in its favour. A far more useful contribution to this debate and to improving the country’s fortunes at the polling booth must include solutions that will guard against the possible disenfranchisement of large swathes of the population (and resulting chaos) were INEC to encounter on polling days the snafus and fubars (including the tendency for opposition polling agents in key states to disappear ahead of elections) that Nigerians run into daily in their use of the digital infrastructure currently in place.

We, do, however, believe that whether it is the Senate, the political opposition, or our newspapers, a far more important contribution to this discussion on electoral reform would have been served by commissioning a short document to spell out what is needed to ensure reliable real-time e-transfer and e-transmission of electoral results across the country.

The din of the protests over the Senate’s earlier decision drowned out the fact that INEC currently runs a hybrid system that uploads results, even as the paper trail continues to be collated by hand. In those sections of the country where patchy internet coverage could delay the digital upload of election results, could we, for instance, leverage Elon Musk’s Starlink? Whatever our preferred options, there are cost implications, of course. And this includes who pays for the infrastructure, how and when. Questions for which answers are important, if we are to get the next general elections right, and which are, sadly, missing in even newspaper editorials on this matter. It is not surprising that a lot of papers have taken to pillorying the Senate on its decision. The prospect of the electronic transfer of election results removes an important opportunity for the malevolent interference in the popular vote, and so will remain a very seductive idea.

We, do, however, believe that whether it is the Senate, the political opposition, or our newspapers, a far more important contribution to this discussion on electoral reform would have been served by commissioning a short document to spell out what is needed to ensure reliable real-time e-transfer and e-transmission of electoral results across the country.

Doyin Salami, an economist, is CEO at KAINOS Edge Consulting, while Uddin Ifeanyi, a journalist manqué and retired civil servant, can be reached @IfeanyiUddin.