By SIMON EBEGBULEM
FORMER Chief Whip of the senate, Senator Roland Owie, yesterday, threw his support behind the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, position not to use the Direct Data Capture machines for the 2011 elections, saying that from the experiences during the INEC’s voters’ registration exercise, Nigeria was not ripe for electronic voting.

Owie who reacted to the controversy generated by the issue, argued that the essence of the use of DDC machines was to get an authentic voters registration devoid of double registration, which according to him, would help INEC conduct credible elections.

His words: “I am sorry that we always have problem with this country. We become illiterates unnecessarily, INEC is not doing anything that is wrong, what INEC has done is to get people to register with the DDC machines and after that, a print out was made which was placed for claims and objections which ended last Friday so it is not manual registration, it has been done through the DDC machine.

“First, the Electoral Law does not provide for e-voting and no sensible Nigerian today will ask for e-voting in a nation where there is no power, in fact during the registration exercise, many communities were hiring generators, sometimes the battery you  charged for eight hours will work for only four hours and you have to recharge it again, a nation like that cannot yet go for e-voting,” he said.