By Emmanuel Elebeke

Dr. Jimson Olufuye, National President, ITAN

DR. Jimson Olufuye is the National President of Information Technology Association of Nigeria, ITAN and Vice Chairman of the World Information Technology Services Alliance, WITSA.

In January this year, he was also nominated to the membership of the Working Group of the United Nation’s Commission for Science and Technology for Development to work on the improvement of internet and the governance forum. In this interview with Hi-Tech, Dr. Ofuye made an appraisal of the use of technology in the just concluded elections. Excerpts:

The elections have come and gone, As a local and international player in the IT sector, how would you appraise the deployment of technology in the elections by INEC?

From the result we’ve got so far globally, the general consensus is that INEC has given Nigerians a free, fair and credible election that produced what we say are the representatives of the choice of the people. Even, though, there were pockets of wrong doings and violence, it was a very election.

Now, talking about the use of technology?

It is a different ball game. We are not happy that INEC itself lead by Professor Attahiru Jega did not look inwards in terms of using technology in this elections, whole heartedly.

Though, along the line, during the last minutes, Zinox, one of us was given the mandate to supply the Direct Data Capturing machines for voters registration. Even as it happened, Zinox proved itself. That is the kind of things we expect Professor Jega to do, to focus on embracing local players and stakeholders in the IT sector and use them. This will create more jobs and wealth locally, so, that we can improve and stop taking our scarce foreign exchange outside, thereby providing more jobs for our teeming, unemployed youths.

For us, that is the major regret we had from the just concluded general elections in Nigeria.

In terms of comprehensive use of technology, INEC wasn’t there. For instance, in the collation of results, you can see all manner of manipulations as if we are not in the information society; as if Nigeria is not a big player in the industry. We know how the telecom revolution came about even when some people thought it will not be possible.

It is regrettable that we had to manually tally figures in this election, when we could have used technology which would have made it more beautiful and transparent. There wouldn’t have been cases of mutilated results as we are hearing from different quarters.

With full deployment of technology by INEC, from the polling centres, it would have been possible to transmit the data to the central data base automatically. The voting process was okay but the process of transmission was where the problem was, moving from the polling unit to the collation centre and from local governments to state capitals. That is where the gap is. There are a lot of lessons for INEC to learn concerning this.

Can you explain further?

INEC must look inwards and use our resources to empower our people, develop our sectors. If it were not so, how can the President be emphasising the issue of job creation in the country, when major events like the just concluded general elections and other projects of high magnitude that can engage youths are not used by those employed by the same government? Actually, millions of jobs would have been created if INEC had engaged local industries in all the services it required.

From what we saw in this elections, Professor Jega has to embrace all and bring in all stakeholders in to tap from their knowledge for him to succeed. I remember ITAN and WITSA tried to reach out to Professor Jega before the elections but that approach eventually turned out to be an albatross. It is not because we were for monetary gains, but because this is our area as professionals and we felt we had a duty to contribute our quota in this national assignment.

It would have been right for him to offer us the opportunity to deploy our know how as support to major institutions, to evolve change in this kind of important transition for our nation. At the end, Professor Jega decided to snub the IT professionals and frankly speaking this act by INEC is regrettable. This is technology. It is cheaper to deploy full technology in the whole electioneering process.

The system of governance is about multi-stakeholder. It is inclusivity of all major stakeholders like ITAN, NCS in this area. What we are saying is that our resources should be used to create opportunities for our people and there must be opportunity to make broadcast to tell the world how good we are in terms of technology. In terms of technology, we are developed but we did not show it in the just concluded elections.

How would you assess the impact of the digital registration?

I will say not impressive use of technology. If you look at the biometrics, it was captured during the registration process but not used during the election proper. We didn’t see the effect and application during the election as promised by INEC. First and foremost, those that had double finger print should have been made known to the public but INEC failed in that area. With this, every other thing were more like a ruse. We did not see the effect of the use of technology at the polls because it would be ideal if those votes were determined by our biometrics because we have the bandwidth. You just come in, do your thump print, the server cross-checks if the person was there and everything will go to the central database.

What difference could the bio-metrics have done in the elections?

The use of the bio-metrics would have made the elections results very accurate. With that, you don’t need the state Returning Electoral Commissioner to tally any result. Automatically, it will register all the results as the voters are casting their votes because it has the capacity to detect and reject multiple voting as we noticed in the elections. If you want to check the result in the system, the system will allow you do that automatically with cloud computer technology.

We feel Jega got it wrong because he did not embrace change and open consultation and he forgot that we are in an information society. If those who are supposed to know like Professor Jega do not know by now, then we are in trouble. We are making it clear that we must embrace IT, the internet and invite all the stakeholders to be part of the process. No one can know it all, even professors like Jega must always learn. It is only the dead that cannot learn. If we want the best, then we must go for the know how.