IT warns INEC chairman against failure of new technology

One of those who made this point is the former president of Nigeria Computer Society, NCS, Dr. Chris Nwannenna, who said the argument cited by INEC that the system would work in Nigeria simply because it worked in other climes is not acceptable.

According to him, the argument does not hold water considering the fact that Ghana has a voter population of 14 million and 23000 polling units compared to Nigeria with a voter population of over 73 million and 180 000 polling units.

Nwannenna, citing these differences, argued that it is not guaranteed that Nigeria will record the same level of success in the use of the new technology.

These fears were anchored on the possible and noticeable lapses already exhibited by some of the machines as demonstrated by the electoral body.

Their position is that IT system generally degrades in performance when processing a large-sized database like in the case of INEC, which is faced with over 60 million registered voters in the elections.

Another area of concern expressed by Nwannenna is that the new election system being introduced by INEC includes a module for SMS (Short Messaging Service), which implies that results are to be transmitted by SMS from Polling Units directly to, perhaps, INEC servers somewhere.

He however, questioned the workability of the Card Readers and the onward transmission of results.

For him, the malfunctioning of the card reader alone will be lesser of the problems because if the card reader malfunctions, it will be obvious to everyone watching, adding that the hacking of SIM cards in the Card Readers should be more worrisome to all concerned.

He also pointed out that it will not be easy to know when SMS messages fail to arrive at their destinations.

Nwanneenna, who is also the Managing Director, Condata Systems Limited, argued that the system was only partially successful in Ghana even though Ghana’s Electoral Commission had earlier trained the operators and had also conducted a two-day test of the system before live deployment.

Quoting an Africa report, which stated that, “the biometric machines brought forth significant problems with reliability, he stated that in two polling stations visited by the Africa Report, in Ghana, biometric machines broke down and held up voting for over an hour. In some cases, voters, having to wait in line for so long, who then considered skipping the vote and heading home”, leading to extension of the voting till the next day.

He equally revealed that there were also issues of “fraud that took place regarding the biometric identification cards of unsuspecting voters in the Ghana example, which led to the challenge of the result of the election in court.

He then advised electoral umpire to avoid the temptation of deploying its new election system without adequate testing.

Another IT expert, who spoke on the INEC technology is Rogba Adeoye.

He also expressed mixed feelings about the workability of  the new technology, saying that INEC ought to have taken much more time to test-run the  technology before deploying it in the general elections.

But he however, said any instrument that is meant  to authenticate holders in the forthcoming elections would be a welcome development.

“‘Anything that will authenticate the card holder  of that card, I am in full support of it because, the machine will check and conform if the one issued is original. If that is the work and it does that, it is okay but INEC must carry out the necessary tests,” he added.

Adeoye, who is the National President, Information Technology Systems Security Professionals (ITSSP) and former Chairman, NCS, Ikeja branch, advised INEC to apply all the necessary cautions and carry out the much needed tests before deploying the new technology to avert possible failure.

Source: vanguardngr