The People’s Life Improvement Foundation (PLIF) has called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to implement biometric features for the Permanent Voter Cards similar to those on Subscriber Identification Module (SIM) cards to ease voting and encourage electoral transparency in Nigeria.
President of the foundation, Somina Elekima, who made the call in Abuja, said that the biometric features would reduce human interference during elections.
With a view to conducting a free, fair and transparent polls, the Nigerian electoral umpire introduced the Direct Data Capture Machines (DDCM) in 2007.
INEC, at the time, said that it was confident the machine would reduce incidents of multiple registration, double voting, and other electoral malpractices.
However, this system failed to address the collation of results.
‘when PVCs are upgraded, we shall have biometric accreditations, voting options, transmission commands with printers connected, so that the ballot of the voter as voted will be printed out and placed on the ballot box physically’, Elekima said.
‘The deal is that, by this time, the votes have been computed and transmitted from the polling unit to the local government, state and national levels simultaneously.
‘This on-time transmission of results alone can save up to 70 percent of the sanctity of the election.
‘The remaining 30 percent will be that of possible hackers which will then be identified as a single problem that will be subject to the best technological test in case of an election petition’.
He appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari and the national assembly to endorse the electoral amendment bill to ensure biometric accreditation, electronic voting, electronic counting and electronic transmission of results.
‘If we can achieve this, the myriad of violence will be reduced. The fraud is now reduced to just inducing voters with bribes, but the actual voting will be individual’s decision’, he added.
Source: NAN
Photo source: NAN