By Prince Osuagwu

For the second time in two years, the Nigerian Society of Engineers,NSE, has declared that its general election recently was successfully conducted through the deployment of electronic voting,e-voting system designed and produced locally by Nigerian Communications Satellite, NIGCOMSAT Limited.

The first of the e-voting process took place in Ilorin, Kwara State in 2012, while this latest feat took place at the International Conference Centre (ICC), Abuja during its yearly general meeting/conference late last year.

NSE President, Engr. Mustapha Balarabe Shehu  said  “this is for the second time. At least those who may not believe what we did last year will be more convinced now that we have the expertise in this country to solve many of our problems. In fact, NIGCOMSAT has made us proud”.

Prelude to the e-voting, an e-registration took place a day before where all eligible engineers had their data captured and saved on a data base. Biometric details included photographs, finger prints among others for Radio Frequency Identification (RFID).

In all, 2048 engineers were captured during the registration and 1574 voted eventually. These figures surpassed those of previous year which recorded 1313 on the register while 1303 voted.

NIGCOMSAT platform included 30 networked computers that were connected to a central server and the internet to enable agents of contestants monitor the election online, real time.

The platform was fitted with enhanced software developed by the Micro Electronic Centre (MEC) at NIGCOMSAT. “This was a great improvement from the previous year”, Head of MEC, Dr. Agu Collins explained.

Elected Deputy President, Engr. Otis Anyaeji praised the process which he described as state of the art for voting and therefore prescribed it strongly for national, state and local government election; adding that this is likened to an enterprise that should be sustained.

Chairman, House Committee on Information and Communications Technology (ICT), Hon. Ibrahim Gusau, who is also a member of NSE, commended the e-registration and e-voting platform of NIGCOMSAT saying “this is definitely good for the country”.
Gusau participated fully in the e-registration and e-voting processes.