By Prince Osuagwu

Engr. Timasaniyu Ahmed-Rufai, MD/CEO, NigComSat

Though the recently-concluded general elections has been given pass marks by a great number of observers, the sore point for technology freaks and ICT experts is that the electronic registration which gulped quite a chunk of tax payers’ money was dumped for manual applications in other processes of the election. So, when a few ICT journalists ran into the Managing Director/Chief Executive of Nigerian Communications Satellite Limited, NIGCOMSAT, Engr. Timasaniyu Ahmed-Rufai, recently, the issue was raised, based on the fact that he had advocated for an outright e-voting system earlier before the elections. Rufai did not also mince words when he stoutly declared that with the e-voting system developed by NigComSat, Nigeria was ready for e-voting in 2015. Excerpts:

Sometime ago you proposed e-voting system for the country. Has the project been abandoned or is it still relevant, in the light that the system used in the past elections can best be described as electro-manual.?

No, the e-voting system has not been abandoned, and was successfully demonstrated to the Chairman of INEC, Professor Attahiru Jega including the entire process from Registration, verification, voting and tallying. Furthermore, the system was recently utilized to conduct election for the NigComSat multipurpose cooperative society and was monitored by staff members locally and internationally using various web enabled devices such as Blackberry, iPads and PCs.

Why that project, in the first place, and how long did it take you to develop it?

Nigeria is known by the international community for electoral ineptitude and general inability to conduct credible elections. Unfortunately credible elections are crucial to the provision of the dividends of democracy. Every quarter of a decade the country prepares for yet another election to determine who takes over the helm of affairs. The lack of enthusiasm displayed by the electorate is a disillusion due to the fact that previous elections have been marred by gross irregularities and lacked credibility because they virtually fail to involve the electorate in the process of electing a candidate. Consequently, NigComSat’s Printed Circuit Board(PCB) & Microelectronics Centre of the Research & Development Department embarked on a mission to mitigate the aforementioned issues. The result was an electronic solution to the existing manual system which is slow, tedious, bulky, unattractive and erroneous. The electronic voting platform would provide more secure and reliable system in which electorates’ votes count. The electronic nature of the system moderates the level of human interaction with the system, thus diminishing its disposition to election malpractices and human errors. It will also restore confidence in electoral processes in the country. The fool-proof and adaptable technology can instantaneously give collated results if communication links are provided to all polling units from local, state to national level. The estimated design and development time of both hardware and software components is three months.

Interesting. How does it work?

Like I said, e-voting system is a system developed by a team of software and hardware engineers of the Research & Development department of NigComSat Ltd. It adopts primarily two technologies; the Radio Frequency Identification, RFID and biometrics. The RFID is a technology that offers huge potential for automating processes and providing accurate, reliable data. Its peculiar feature includes provision of a globally unique digital identity to each physical object. This technology comprises two major units, tags and interrogators. RFID tags are known as transponders that listen for radio signal sent by transceivers/interrogators and readers. When a transponder receives a radio query it replies by sending a unique ID back to the interrogator for further processing. Biometrics technology on the other hand provides means of recognizing humans based on an intrinsic physical trait unique to every individual.

This is technical; can you explain for the ordinary man on the street?

What I am explaining is that the e-voting system is divided into three parts namely, registration, verification/voting and collation. Registration, directly captures the details of voters and stores it in a smart card and the details are sent remotely to a database in the election headquarters. It consists of both hardware and firmware units combined to acquire and locally store voters’ data such as fingerprints and personal data. Voting starts with the verification of the voter. This is very essential to eliminate multiple voting. After the verification, voting starts. The voter follows the instructions to select the candidate in a polling booth. Before saving the details the voter is prompted to confirm their selection and then a field is set in the card to show what election the voter has cast his vote. While voting is taking place collation is also taking place simultaneously and the results are displayed real time on a web based application. The cast votes are counted in real time. The votes can be viewed by all but cannot be modified. The communication link between the voting terminal and the remote central database is protected against intruders. So voters, can view results and monitor the progress of their candidate via the web.

Because this system is biometric based, there is no possibility of multiple voting, impersonation is impossible because you cannot take someone else’s card and vote with it. Invalid votes as a result of ink smear in the traditional voting system is eliminated through the e-voting system which is just by clicking. Real-time online view of the result of the votes cast makes the system more transparent. The benefits are numerous. Bulk paper work is eliminated by the e-voting system, possibilities of human error is reduced. It can be programmed for voters to vote from any part of the country for the candidate of their choice, thus eliminating the risk, cost and stress of traveling from one place to the other to either register or to vote. Nigerians in diaspora can also vote irrespective of their geographic location. The network is a highly secured one; rigging through ballot stuffing, ballot box snatching and hijacking is not applicable

But everything made by man has its challenges. What would that of e-voting system be?

You are right. But the only things we can readily think of is the fear of hacking when the machines are networked, but you also know there are solutions to take care of that if government means business. Again, lack of adequate infrastructural amenities such as power and inadequate ICT access in some geographic regions of the country. Literacy level of the electorate is also a concern but we can only get better if we decide to get things right. Countries of the world where stable power and ubiquitous infrastructural amenities are order of the day are not so endowed as we are. So what I am saying is that if we decide to adopt this, we can start to work on those challenges now.

Looking at the level of work on this project, assuming all the challenges are taken care of when do you think we are ready to go with this system?

I told you that we have tested it to both INEC and on our own in-house elections which was monitored here and internationally. Everything is ready. As a matter of fact, we can use this system in 2015 and that would be Nigeria making history again