By Peace Oladipo
The Phase 2 complex of the Oye campus at Federal University, Oye-Ekiti (FUOYE) became a scene of chaos and danger during the Student Union Government (SUG) Election on July 2nd, 2021. Fikayo, a 300-level student and party agent, found himself in the midst of the turmoil, desperately protecting the ballot box from pursuing miscreants armed with machetes. Fikayo’s harrowing experience serves as a testament to the issue of electoral violence that has marred Nigeria’s political landscape, extending even to the student community.
Such violence encompasses a range of alarming acts, including clashes between supporters of different political parties, acts of intimidation, voter suppression, the snatching of ballot boxes, and tragically, the loss of lives.
Statistics further underline the extent of this issue. According to Nigeria Election Violence Tracker, 13,158 events were characterized by violence of different kinds in the last General Elections between January 1, 2022 and April 21, 2023. In 2022, Punch reported that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has lost no fewer than 9,836 smart card readers in over 42 attacks on its offices and staff in three years. And, more than 1,149 persons, including INEC employees and security officers were killed in the three elections held in 2011, 2015 and 2019. With the destruction of several ballot papers, cubicles and other materials.
Photo: SmileGist FUOYE
A parallel to this reality unfolded during the 2021 Student Union Government (SUG) elections at FUOYE. According to Yakub Shoaga (pseudonym), an SUG official vividly recounts the intense contention surrounding the election’s outcome. Tensions reached a boiling point even before the official voting commenced, as violent clashes erupted between rival factions on the campaign grounds. Shoaga recounts: “The followers of these teams clashed and resorted to breaking bottles right in front of the school gate in Ikole, which is the second campus of the university.”
Curbing election violence through e-voting
A week after the disrupted elections, the management of the university decided to adopt the Electronic Voting systems for the elections. The voting was rerun on July 13, 2021 through the newly adopted E-voting system.
According to Mr. Felix Adura, a software engineer in the university’s ICT hub, the voting mechanism is a software embedded on the school’s website. Added as a new feature on the student’s portal, it enabled each student to cast their vote after login his or her portal, and the results were obtained in a few hours.
Only students who have paid their tuition fees and registered on the school portal are eligible to vote. The ICT team have a compiled a list of these eligible candidates and voters to create the voters’ register. On the day of the election, students are required to log in to their portals. Then it takes them to a part where all the names of the contestants, both for executive and other positions, are listed. Upon accessing the feature, students can select the positions and candidates of their choice. They are given the opportunity to review their selections and confirm if it matches their preferred choices. If satisfied, they can submit their vote, and it will be counted.
Professor Dosu Malomo, the dean of student affairs affirmed that the school employed the E-Voting process because they found out the benefits like reduction of stress, end of electoral violence and need for sophistication were inherent. “We adopted E-Voting when we noticed the population of the students was getting larger and needed this kind of intervention”, he told Social Voices.
Photo: SmileGistFuoye
E-voting impact in Fuoye
In an interview, Sunday Adeyemo, the student affairs officer said that the university will continue to adopt the E-Voting system for her SUG elections. “E-Voting saves time and resources. It is also 99% safe, we have experts handling the portal”, he affirmed.
“Faster delivery of election results, increased trust in elections as human error is avoided. Increased voter turnout, cost reduction, reduced ballot waste, easier vote marking and ability of voters to vote remotely”, Akinlade Josiah, a computer programmer said.
Blessing Aluko, a 300-level student who doesn’t vote because of the fear of electoral violence, said the E-Voting helped her to participate in the election, as she was able to exercise her right from the corner of her room.
Regardless of the positivity that comes with E-voting, there have been undeniable and significant issues that serve as drawbacks for this innovation. In December 2022, another election was conducted and several issues were garnered about the ineffectiveness of the E-Voting procedure. The challenges of E-Voting are majorly technical issues, security risks, and concerns about trust and transparency. Technical glitches, software errors, and infrastructure failures can undermine the integrity of the voting process.
Feranmi Favor, a 400-level of computer science, said there was Denial of Service (D.O.S) during the last election. Overwhelming a system with excessive requests, causing it to become unresponsive which made students unable to vote.
E-Voting systems are also vulnerable to cyberattacks and hacking, which can compromise the confidentiality and accuracy of the election results. Additionally, some individuals may question the transparency and auditability of E-Voting systems, raising doubts about the fairness and accuracy of the process.
Majority of the students are not cyber security conscious, which has made them prey to hackers.
According to a student politician who chooses to be anonymous, “the candidates work with tech-savvy individuals who carry out malicious activities on the portal. “We visit cyber cafes, print out the login of the students (they are very predictable: their phone numbers), run with the vision we have. On the election day, we login their portals, vote for our own candidate and we do this for a good number so we can win”, the source said.
This commensurates with a 400- level student, Joy Ademola’s experience who lamented brutally on the election about her inability to vote on her portal after all her struggle to access good network connection. “I was shocked when I wanted to cast my vote and I realized that my portal has been locked, my details have been used. After a while, I found out that I was not the only one who had the issue, many of my friends do.
“It is really not nice, as it is depriving. My liberty to vote was taken from me. In fact, I think we should move from E-Voting back to physical voting. The only advantage I see is voting remotely. In physical voting, there are people controlling it, you can even wait for the votes to be counted. We know who is who (who snatched the box). I think we can’t continue to use E-voting if we want accurate results,” she said.
Nigeria’s adoption of technology for the election
In the 2023 General Election, Nigeria adopted the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) through the Electoral Act signed into law in February 2022, to enhance the efficiency, transparency of the voting process and the seamsless uplaod of results (in real-time).
The (BVAS) is a multifunctional device that performs an array of functions, including voter enrolment, registration, facial and fingerprint verification at the polling units, and allowing election result sheets to be uploaded to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV).
However, the technology was associated with glitches and deficiencies, though the blame was placed on the individuals operating the systems rather than the technology itself. It was discovered that atleast five days after INEC declared the winner of the presidential election, the commission had only uploaded the results of 163,585 out of a total of 176,846 polling units on the INEC IReV portal. This situation raised questions on the functionality of the technology, leaving many doubting the entire electoral process.
Also, in a post-election report, the Minister for Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, claimed that the INEC portal encountered more than 12 million cybersecurity attacks targeted from inside and outside Nigeria.
This story was produced in partnership with Nigeria Health Watch through the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems.
Exactly what someone said, our logins were copied from cyber cafes but to me it is not so
Few days ago we were asked to change our passwords within 24 hours , how are we so sure it wasn’t to facilitate their dubious plot to rig the elections through hacking, I’m not a computer expert, but hacking should be the major reason why e-voting can’t work in this country because it creates another mode for cheating.