BEVERLY HILLS, January 31, (THEWILL) – The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has sought the support of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) saying apart from giving physical copies of results of the 2019 elections to party agents, it is also hoping to announce the results electronically.
The Chairman of INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, said this when he visited the Executive Vice-Chairman of the NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta, in Abuja on Tuesday, where he called on telecoms service providers to assist the Commission.
Yakubu stated that the same mechanism would be used in the forthcoming Ekiti and Osun governorship elections slated for July and September 2018, respectively as he appealed to the NCC, as the regulator of the industry, to facilitate a meeting between INEC and the telecommunications operators with the aim of assisting the electoral body in the conduct of the election.
“We are planning for full deployment (of electronic and manual transmission) this year in governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun. Thereafter we intend to deploy the system in the 2019 general elections,” he revealed.
“INEC has developed the hardware and software. However, we rely on the operators for the transmission of both the figures and scanned images of result sheets. We wish to assure Nigerians that while we transmit the raw figures from polling units, scanned images of the result sheets will also be transmitted electronically in addition to physical copies given to party agents at polling units.
“Similarly, we would like the NCC to facilitate discussions with operators on ways of enhancing their corporate social responsibility to Nigeria’s electoral process. An immediate area of interest to INEC is how the operators can help in voter education and publicity.
“Towards the 2019 general elections, we would like the operators in collaboration with INEC, to send bulk SMS and possibly voice messages as well on the imperative of peaceful elections, the collection of Permanent Voter Cards by registered voters and directional information on the location of polling units for easy access to voters.”
In his response, Danbatta said his agency would try to help the electoral body to ensure that the 2019 elections are free, fair and credible adding that the NCC would try to improve the security of the communications system before the 2019 election so that it would be effective for the dissemination of election results.
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