The Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) has asked the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to introduce online voting in the country to curb violence and suppression of voters in coming elections.
Precious Nwadimuya, chairperson of the NBA Abuja branch, in an interview with newsmen, on Thursday, commended INEC for the introduction of the bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS), but noted that technology should also be introduced for voting.
The chairperson said the introduction of BVAS prevented some regions of the country from producing humongous votes.
“With the introduction of technology in voting, I can sit down in my house and vote. Nobody will intimidate or suppress me or buy my votes at home,” he said
“People are crying foul because accreditation worked very well with the BVAS, but failed in the transmission of results.
“This resulted in the speculation that the results were manually manipulated.”
” I can say that because of the BVAS, they could not really manipulate the figures. Now that the BVAS captures the number of persons accredited, you cannot inflate the votes beyond what is in the BVAS.”
Nwadimuya said INEC failed in the area of logistics despite the huge amount of money budgeted for the 2023 elections.
“The feedback we got was that polling unit officers could not leave the INEC offices where they were given the election materials because there was no logistics,” he said.
“So it was as if INEC focused on carrying the election materials to far away places, but failed to make arrangements for transportation for those areas that are close.”
