Why Nigeria should adopt electronic voting — Onu

Nigeria needs to reform its electoral system by adopting electronic voting to help in eliminating the errors caused by human factor

The Minister of Science and Technology, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu said Nigeria needs to reform its electoral system by adopting electronic voting to help in eliminating the errors caused by human factor in compiling election results.

Dr. Onu said this when he paid a facility visit to the Electronic Development Institute (ELDI) in Awka, Anambra state on Tuesday.

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The minister who was confident that when Nigeria reforms her electoral system by adopting e-voting, malpractices, fraud and less credible results would be a thing of the past, adding that more Nigerians will be willing to participate further in the electoral process.

According to him, the nation’s democratic process will experience tremendous improvement when these reforms take place.

“Democracy is like a living organism that grows like humans, animals and plants, for this to happen we need electronic voting, as this will reduce malpractices associated with human errors”, he said.

He noted that with the level of innovative work done at the (ELDI), Nigeria will no longer need to import electronic products from abroad, but rather produced in the country to meet up local demand and the surplus will be exported, this he added will improve the nation’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product).

Electronic voting machines

On the production of e-voting machines, his Ministry and INEC (Independent National Electoral Commission), had teamed up to build voting machines with encouraging results, he said.

Dr. Onu hailed the efforts of the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI), in building critical engineering infrastructure.

Earlier, the Managing Director of the Institute, Dr. Patrick Okwu commended the vigour and resilience brought to Science and Technology Sector by the Minister and his team since assumption of office.