- Electronic voting machines will be used in the local government election of Kaduna state
- According to the Kaduna state governor, Nasir El-Rufai, the local government elections will be the first ever in Nigeria conducted by electronic voting
Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna state has said electronic voting machines will be used in the local government election of the state scheduled for May 12.
El-Rufai said his administration had invested a considerable amount in electronic voting because the All Progressives Congress (APC) believes that votes must count.
He said: “Our local government elections will be the first ever in Nigeria conducted by electronic voting,” he said. “By introducing electronic voting machines, this government is affirming its democratic credentials, a firm belief that people’s vote must count.”
The governor said the introduction of the card reader for the 2015 election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) helped promote electoral integrity, saying that Kaduna is taking it a step further to bring full electronic voting.
The governor said his the APC government is making life better in Kaduna state, adding that in the last three years, his administration had “worked hard to overcome the legacy of sorrow that PDP left”. “In each of the two full budget years we have had, 2016 and 2017, this government has spent more than N60bn on schools, hospitals, roads and water projects,” he said.
“This injection of at least N120 billion of budgetary investments into our state comes at a difficult period of national economic challenges. But we have been able to this because we have overthrown the corrupt legacy of the PDP; because the purpose of government has been rightly adjusted to making life better for our people through a commitment to their education, health, jobs and security,” he said.
The event was attended by John Oyegun, national chairman of the APC; Zainab Ahmed, minister of state, budget and national planning, and chieftains of the party in the state.
the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu, said electronic voting will not be used in 2019. Prof. Yakubu said this in Abuja on Wednesday, April 11, at the end opening of a three-day International Conference of Election Management Bodies (EMBs) in West and Southern African countries in Abuja themed “Opportunities and Challenges in the Use of Technology: Experiences from West and Southern Africa”.
The INEC boss, who also doubles as the president of ECOWAS Network of Electoral Commissions (ECONEC), however, said that electronics would be deployed in the collation and transmission of elections results.
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