NBA urges INEC to introduce online voting to curb violence, voter suppression

The Abuja chapter of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) has implored the country’s electoral body, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), to allow online voting.

In an interview with reporters on Thursday, Precious Nwadimuya, the head of the NBA Abuja branch, said that online voting will eliminate election violence and voter suppression.

Nwadimuya praised INEC for implementing the bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS). He also said that voting should also use technology.

The chairperson said that BVAS stopped some parts of the country from getting a lot of significant votes.

“With the introduction of technology in voting, I can sit down in my house and vote. Nobody will intimidate or suppress me or buy my votes at home,” he said

“People are crying foul because accreditation worked very well with the BVAS but failed in the transmission of results.

“This resulted in the speculation that the results were manually manipulated.

“I can say that because of the BVAS, they could not really manipulate the figures. Now that the BVAS captures the number of persons accredited, you cannot inflate the votes beyond what is in the BVAS.”

Nwadimuya said that although a lot of money was set aside for the 2023 elections, INEC failed in logistics.

“The feedback we got was that polling unit officers could not leave the INEC offices where they were given the election materials because there was no logistics,” he said.

“So it was as if INEC focused on carrying the election materials to far away places, but failed to make arrangements for transportation for those areas that are close.”