On Tuesday, 4th of June, 2024, some staff at the College of Medicine, University of Ibadan (COMUI), ventured on an electoral procedure that has the potential of solving Nigeria’s age-long election problems.

COMUI deployed electronic voting to elect a new provost for that section of the university. 322 staff who were eligible to vote received a voting link in their emails and then went ahead and voted for the candidate of their choice. They had the freedom to do this because each person could vote within the privacy of his or her home or office without coercion. The voting process commenced at 9 am that day and was concluded at exactly 2 pm. The winner was announced at 4 pm on the same day.

This was not the first time this voting procedure was employed by COMUI. In 2020, this was what was done that saw Prof. Olayinka O. Omigbodun, the first female provost of COMUI, come to office. Because the voting process allowed voters to elect who they truly wanted, and there was no coercion from anyone, the election was generally deemed free and fair; and there was little or no complaint from the people who lost.

In the just concluded election, Prof. Temidayo O. Ogundiran was elected Provost and would soon be sworn into office. I observed the whole process in close quarters and I am convinced that e-voting may be the solution to the perennial Nigerian election troubles.

READ ALSO: OPINION: Raising the Bar for Press Freedom in Nigeria

It might be worth remembering that the Nigerian society is held together only by one factor: good governance. It is the reason why everything must be done by all right-thinking Nigerians to have the proper people in public office. The real challenge that this country faces is that we stand the chance of running a democratic process with the wrong people at the helm. Democracy is not a divine injunction – it is a human concept that has generally come to be accepted as the best form of government in our day and time.

If Nigeria will practice democracy, by all means, this country should practice the right kind of democracy. I am not surprised that proper democratic norms are being practised in Nigerian universities. The trouble with Nigeria in times past was that our thinking men, our intellectuals, were locked up in citadels of learning, and refused to bring their thinking and practices into society. The developed world is what it is because their societies employ successful models (for their day-to-day living) formulated by their citadels of learning.

So, if the University of Ibadan has succeeded in carrying out successful e-voting, what is wrong with translating the same to the general public space?

READ ALSO: OPINION: INEC’s Flawed Voter Register Undermines Credibility of Election Analysis

I was in the middle of thinking this matter through when I visited a friend, a computer scientist. My friend is in the middle of creating software for a bank to transact financial dealings with their customers – of no less than ten million customers. I asked my friend: if the University of Ibadan successfully conducted e-voting with 322 lecturers, and saw a provost elected to office, what kind of system can be built to handle a voters’ population of about 30 million Nigerians?

My friend replied saying that such a system is the easiest computing system any computer scientist can make in Nigeria. He explained that in the world of computers, there is little difference between 350 voters and 350 million voters. The latter will require more infrastructure and a little more monitoring, but the same system that was used to handle 350 voters can equally be used to handle 350 million voters. I then asked him: what happened to IREV? My friend said that Nigeria does not possess the political will to do certain things. That the whole IREV matter was a scam. If the people at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) are willing to do the right thing, IREV would work, and Nigerians would get the results of their elections in real time as promised by INEC. IREV was sabotaged, particularly during the last presidential election, by those who preferred to profit from rigging elections.

Electronic voting is a relatively new concept and even developed climes have not completely employed it in their electoral processes. What democracies are doing, however, is to bring e-voting alongside manual voting and there is no reason why Nigeria should be left behind in this project. As a close observer of the e-voting process in COMUI, one cannot but appreciate the tenor that the whole campaigning and voting process took. Candidates who were vying for the office of Provost had to make an effort to plead for votes. There was little or no need to bribe anyone to vote for you because, when the person would eventually vote, you would not be there and no one knew who voted for who.

There was complete freedom of conscience in exercising one’s franchise and the lecturers chose the person they wanted to lead them. It was even said that the person who became Provost put in the least amount of campaign; everyone knew his track record at the College of Medicine – the works of his hands spoke for him. If this can happen in a smaller microcosm of Nigeria, it can happen in a wider context. As we contemplate employing e-voting as a feature in our democracy, let us look at some possible challenges electronic voting could face within Nigeria and then proffer solutions to them.

READ ALSO: CoMUI Provost Thinks ‘Japa’ Is a Haemorrhage in Nigeria’s Healthcare System, But FG Says It’s No Big Deal

The first problem that will naturally arise is what the country will do with the mass of illiterate people who must vote via e-voting. The solution must be a committed effort by the government of the day to bring education to the people. An educated society is always better off than one that is replete with illiterates. Their standard of living will be higher, crime will be lower, and there will always be a general commitment to improving systems in the country. This will also translate to how people vote. E-voting can work at the University of Ibadan because all the voters are educated. As the masses of people in this country gain an education, our electoral processes will also improve. Nevertheless, pending the time we sort out the matter of education, manual voting can work side by side with e-voting.

The second challenge is the matter of electoral malpractices. The same computer system that can handle 350 and 350 million voters similarly can also be easily manipulated by unscrupulous computer scientists who will add a few zeroes to the votes of a preferred candidate. The solution is not to completely abandon e-voting as an idea but to put in additional systems for monitoring the voting process. Just as INEC is receiving and uploading votes to their IREV, so also could all parties involved in the election receive votes in their situation rooms. In the recent elections in South Africa, the people of that country saw, in real-time, as the votes were coming in and everybody could tell who was leading. There is no reason a similar thing cannot happen in Nigeria. Being the giant of Africa should not be in words alone; we can be the giant in practice too.

In the 2023 presidential election, I observed how a new demography of voters emerged in Nigeria and how their hopes were squashed. Young Nigerian people, who were the worst hit by bad governance, took their future into their own hands and were determined to vote in a new lease of political machination into our country. These people’s hopes were dashed by INEC. One observed how on the Saturday of the presidential elections these young people came out in their numbers to vote, and when they observed the shenanigans of INEC, they completely lost hope in a Nigeria that could work. The whole japa phenomenon was exacerbated by this reality. Many of them went on TikTok and tore their voters’ cards on live video. When the gubernatorial elections came, they simply did not come out to vote. INEC had earlier indicated that a large percentage of new voters have come out to exercise their franchise. These young people came out because they believed INEC would do the right thing but they were thoroughly disappointed.

The University of Ibadan College of Medicine has proven to us that e-voting can be a reality in Nigeria. With e-voting, our young people who are enlightened and tech-savvy will vote in great numbers and choose the people they prefer to run the affairs of their country. With e-voting, there will be no need for coercion of any kind; Nigerians will vote who they want in the privacy and security of their homes. With e-voting, this country may begin to venture near experiencing what true democracy should be. When our elected officials understand that they are in office to serve the people, and not themselves, we will have a revolution in good governance. And Nigeria will begin to approximate to the country of our dreams. Until then, the future remains bleak.

Adekunle James is a writer, blogger and social media influencer. He is also a Christian missionary. He lives in Ibadan with his wife and two children. He can be reached at [email protected].