Insights from the February 2023 General Elections
The start of the Tinubu administration in Nigeria, following the end of the Buhari administration, was polarizing and marred by allegations of voter suppression and irregularities in the electoral process. Over 60% of the population did not vote for Tinubu as their preferred president, and opposition parties have filed lawsuits challenging the election results. The February 2023 general election in Nigeria presents new truths about voter suppression and the problem of reliance on technology to democratize the electoral process.
Lawsuits challenging President Tinubu’s victory are citing voter suppression, irregularities in the use of technology i.e, the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), and failure of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to deliver election results in real-time as promised. Nigeria’s electoral umpires promoted the introduction of BVAS to capture election results directly from the polling units but concluded the collation of votes and declared Tinubu as President-elect 3 days after the elections.
“First is verifying the genuineness of the PVCs and the fingerprint or facial authentication of voters during accreditation, and second is replacing the Z-pad for uploading the polling unit results to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) in real-time on election day,” Deputy Director of ICT at INEC Lawrence Bayode assured Nigerians on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily program in November 2022. The precarious situation that followed is a highly contested election that has attracted mixed feelings from around the world.
Nigeria’s fragility in the face of a prevailing global economic downturn is characterized by emotionally charged citizens and aggrieved opposition parties expressing disappointment in the electoral system. Although President Tinubu now presides over the nation, many call for justice through an overhaul of the electoral process. Nigeria’s 2023 general election is being contested for substantial non-compliance with the Constitution, the Electoral Act, and INEC guidelines.
Voter Suppression and eVoting in Nigeria
Experts have argued that eVoting can put a stop to irregularities that amount to rigging during elections in Nigeria. Arguments in favor of eVoting also incorporate the need for diaspora involvement in the electoral process, as computer-mediated voting will allow Nigerians abroad to vote for public office leaders remotely. Although applying technology to the electoral process in this way sounds exciting, it is clear from the 2023 general election that Nigeria is not yet ready for eVoting.
According to the European Center for Electoral Support (ECES), Nigeria can draw lessons from the experiences of other countries with similar demographic attributes and plan for phased implementation of e-voting in the near future. It is still an ambitious dream that is possible only after the fallibility of the Nigerian people is addressed through the assertion of rigged elections as self-sabotage. Political enlightenment and investment in technical capabilities to marshal the electoral process and avoid data vulnerabilities are needed.
Without proper education and diffusion of innovations, eVoting will create greater inequities because not every citizen can afford or sustain the basic technology. Nigeria still needs to address underlying issues affecting elections’ integrity before tackling the weaknesses posed by the application of technology, e.g., card reader failures that lead to stalled BVAS verification and manual accreditation on election day. E-voting is also very susceptible to fraud and hacking. It is controversial because, unlike manual ballots that can be recounted in an election audit, eVotes are digitally aggregated in cyberspace and can become complex to investigate.
A more critical issue identified is voter suppression, the modern form of election rigging. It is far easier and less chaotic to suppress votes by reducing voter turnout in areas considered to be strongholds for opposition parties than it is to snatch a ballot box successfully. In the recent election, a mix of new and indirect forms of voter suppression caused Nigeria to record the lowest voter turnout statistic in history. The inconsistencies reported with the BVAS and IReV in the 2023 voting cycle also show that eVoting in Nigeria today will merely amount to the incorporation of ‘anyhowness’ – a sociocultural posture that has kept Nigeria stagnant in many aspects of development.
The Future of Elections in Nigeria
In 2019, many Nigerians traveled across states where they are registered to vote, but the government postponed the exercise by one week on the morning of the scheduled elections. Citizens were trapped in the dilemma of a return journey to vote the following week, and many could not afford the personal sacrifice and recanted.
When the elections finally held, strongholds of the opposition party were rife with attacks, violence, ballot snatching, and other vices that yielded low voter turnout. Conversely, polling units where the ruling party was expected to have high voter turnouts were relatively safe but recorded more technical issues; card readers didn’t work effectively in these areas. Hence, manual accreditation was rampant and resulted in voter fraud.
Voter suppression is any strategy used to influence the outcome of an election by discouraging or preventing specific groups of people from voting. In the 2023 general elections, voter suppression was characterized by difficulties obtaining a valid voter card, a monetary policy that created a faux scarcity of the Naira, ethnoreligious crises, and pockets of election day violence. These factors combined to demotivate citizens and impacted traditional voting.
Those who favor eVoting say that technology can insulate citizens from election violence and prevent vote buying and ballot snatching. There is a need to highlight subjectivity in the application of technology. Technology itself is not inherently subjective, as it operates based on objective principles and functions. However, the application of technology in the electoral process is influenced by human factors and is thus susceptible to fraud or manipulation.
In that sense, the effectiveness and integrity of technology in future elections will depend on how it is implemented and managed by Nigerian citizens and Nigerian electoral umpires.
The loss of faith in the electoral system in Nigeria will worsen if elections are left in the hands of those who have the power and resources to bend the will of the people in favor of personal or political ideals. A key focus for Nigeria today should be tackling voter suppression and strengthening electoral institutions to purge bad actors from the system.
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Email: evelyn.epelle@kaftan.tv
