The much-clamoured electronic voting would solve only one per cent of the country’s electoral challenges, according to the founder and president of KAFTAN TV, Dr. Adewole Adebayo.
The media mogul made this known yesterday at the 2021 National Political Summit in commemoration of Nigeria’s 61st independence anniversary in Abuja.
Dr. Adebayo was among prominent speakers at the event with the theme “Restoring The Legitimacy Of The Nigerian State: The Imperative For Electronic Transmission Of Election Results”
While congratulating the country on the occasion of its 61st independence anniversary, the legal luminary admitted that Nigeria is bedevilled with numerous problems and every citizen has a role to play in ensuring the country is taking out of the wood.
Adebayo said, “Let me congratulate us on the occasion of our independence. We have problems but we don’t know how lucky we are that we still have a republic and we need to keep that republic to endure beyond our lifetime.
“Usually in a democracy, I don’t intellectualise issues. The issue of electronic transmission of results, I agree with. I support it. It’s a major and important issue.
“But in a democracy, an important issue can be a margin are al are an issue because there so many issues that are important. And if we ask people who we are representing what they consider to be the major issues they face, you may surprise that the issue of electronic voting is not the top of their problems”, Adebayo said.
The media mogul’s perspective differed with most speakers who believed that electronic voting was the solution to the country’s electoral problems other pressing issues requires issues that require the intellectual communities’ attention.
“So, while looking at the issues of electronic voting, we must understand that there are other important issues that are adjacent to it.
” Unless we have a proper political consensus, there is no technical way to stop crazy, greedy, desperate officeholders or office-seekers from manipulating the system.
“We should take electronic voting because it’s common sense. We should not waste much of our time on it because once we are able to achieve electronic voting, we will discover it is just 1 per cent of our electoral problems.
“And every election season, intellectuals come together. They discuss issues while the political establishment that we are trying to correct or trying to push out of the office are busy engaging people directly on emotional issues”.
He also said, “First, we must understand that as we are fluent intellectually, philosophically, so also do the political establishment have their intellectual wing.
“So, they will be throwing a bone, a marginal issue and you would be debating that issue and getting applause for the issue but those issues are not what they are going to do next.
“They would simply get you distracted with those issues. They will engage you but will ensure you are not controlling the raging issue in society. So, we need to be careful and ensure we engage the people directly.
“Second issue is that there is no institution that you interface with the politicians and they will not politicise. To start with, if we go to the root of our problems, we don’t even need INEC.
” The existence of INEC is an aberration because honest people don’t need INEC. In many countries, elections are conducted at the local level by honest civil servants. And I was in the INEC delegation in 2006 to tour the entire United States of America where we discovered that there is no state electoral board and there is no national electoral board.
” Everything is being done at the county level. Here in Nigeria, it is the desperation of the political class that led to the creation of INEC, thinking that if we have a big body, somebody will not be cheating at their local governments. Unfortunately, INEC itself became the reservoir of cheating.
Adebayo, however,other pressing issues require maintained that INEC already has what it takes to conduct electoral voting in Nigeria.
“As we speak today, if INEC wanted to organise electronic voting without going to the National Assembly, they can do so because constitutionally, unless there is an Act of the National Assembly forbidden INEC to do something, INEC inherently has the right to do it. So, INEC going to the National Assembly to request for power to do what they can do is itself suspicious.
“At a time I was in Supreme Court arguing over an election that INEC conducted over card reader. Remember there was a time we thought card readers would cure-all, or solve most, of our problems. Unfortunately, in many states, the card readers were programmed not to work.
” So, if you spend all your energy pursuing electronic transmission and, on that day, someone in INEC switched off the generator, what do you do? So, I don’t want us to be chasing shadow like a cat chasing laser light.
” Let the leaders of Nigerian intellectuals engage the people because the government cannot rig election without the people.
“The intellectuals must go and reconcile their differences with the people because the politicians that we are criticising are closer to the people and are interacting with them”, Adebayo declared.
