By Prince Osuagwu
The constant toga Nigeria wears as a country that hardly organises any free and fair election is beginning to worry not only the Nigerian people but some Nigerian corporate organisations.

Perhaps that is why Nigeria’s Communications Satellite company, NigComSat announced that its long research on how to have an error free elections has resulted into a feat in an eVoting solution that could help the country stamp out electoral rigging.

The home grown solution, according to the company  is totally designed, developed and fabricated by Nigerian Engineers at NIGCOMSAT facility in Lugbe, Abuja.

NigComSat’s Managing Director, Mr Ahmed Rufai noted that the solution has been demonstrated to be very workable and if given the financial support needed to purchase materials, 40,000 sets can be produced within four months.

Already, the Minister of Science and Technology Prof. Muhammed  Abubakar is canvassing for the solution’s official acceptance by INEC. Developers of the solution, NigComSat, is an organisation under his ministry.

An elated Prof. Abubakar while inspecting NigComSat facilities said the team of engineers at NIGCOMSAT has proven that only the eVoting solution is a sure proof that the solution to Nigeria’s problems lie at home.

He said that “based on what I have seen here today, I am highly impressed and confident enough to say that my ministry has developed a comprehensive solution for an electronic voting system that will ensure that every votes counts.

I will bring this to the attention of Mr. President and the INEC Chief for appropriate action. With what the young engineers here have developed, biometric-based voters’ register can be produced before Dec. 2010 by NigComSat given the necessary financial support. They have all that is takes to do this.”

The solution is cost effective according to Rufai. It provides a broad base multiplex of foolproof solutions at a fraction of what INEC sought to do in the last 2007 election but which was never implemented. Being home-grown, the solution eliminates the need for FOREX and also it addresses the core of Nigeria’’s electoral rigging problems as clearly understood by the team of indigenous engineers who are all Nigerians.

Fufai said, “it is cost effective, NigComSat already has the production line equipments in-place except for the copy and paste equipment which is meant for mass production.

It has also been demonstrated to be efficient because it is user friendly, a simple guide is embedded in the system and as soon as an individual confirms his or her candidate selection, the cast is recorded and sent to a central server, the system is also designed in such a way that each candidate can monitor the votes coming in and for whom. Remember also that the pool of engineers involved are in federal government employment. By way of comparison, total cost of ownership will be 20 times as much if imported from abroad as against being produced by NigComSat,” he added.

Over 40 billion naira was invested on technology by INEC in 2007. But the investment was fraught with several cases of corruption against INEC officials; poor implementation of the technology involved and non-implementation of the specified contract terms of the technology scheme to enhance the use of biometric indices in the 2007 election.

Rufai said that, “NigComSat e-Voting system is based on Radio Frequency Identification technology which uses a contact-less card system with enhanced security features like triple DES, PES, AES all embedded in a voting card. The registered voter ID with his passport photograph and finger print will be on the card to show that he is eligible to vote. A voter’’s finger print will be screened against his card for authenticity and detect multiple registration.

“Once the finger matches with the one on the card, the voter is then eligible to vote. After a choice of candidate has been made, a printout of the political party, person, time and place he voted will be given to him with a copy placed in the ballot box.

This will prevent multiple registrations and voting. The system also displays full names and pictures of candidates for various offices being contested for as registered by INEC along with names and logos of political parties they belong to.”