The Nigerian general elections is steaming up as it draws closer, it will be held on the 25th of February 2023. The top three candidates that Nigerians are currently clamoring for such as former governor of Anambra Peter Obi, ex-vice president of Nigeria Atiku Abubakar and former Lagos governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
These three contestants are going heads with each other but to be truthful not without protests and a long march around the country. Nigerians do have a habit of forgetting the violence that often accompany the election day. There are usually looting of ballot boxes and false counts and manipulation of the voting results.
This is where a solution should be brought up and in this case Technology is needed but currently there seems to be no echoes of such improvement from INEC. In developed countries, voting centers often use electronic dashboards that accept your vote by finger print recognition.
One might argue that these technology if implemented in Nigeria might still invite corruption, but like other technological advances it always has a good and bad side. There are even concerns that programming in the ballot machines can be tampered with, infecting the machine’s memory card with malicious software which could favour a single candidate.
In all, INEC should start looking for new ways for Nigerians to cast thiers vote with ease, the current voting system is discouraging more people from voting and that needs to change.
