In view of past, and sadly normal occurrences of irregularities and jeopardy in the electoral processes that Nigeria has experienced in the previous elections, the platform NigeriaDecide.org Haven successfully been used in Ekiti State Gubernatorial Polls is ready to ensure transparency inTomorrow’s Osun Governorship elections in a bid to ensure free, fair and credible elections in Nigeria.
Nigeriadecide.org, an online platform designed to prevent election rigging in the coming elections in Nigeria using mobile phones, powered by the Innovative Technologies for Development Foundation (IT4D), will be fully operational Saturday August 9, 2014., for the gubernatorial election holding in Osun State.
The platform has been designed to use one of the most ubiquitous things in Nigeria, mobile phones, in empowering the electorate to protect the integrity and transparency of the election process.
The platform accepts SMS: the electorate can send in reports of whatever situation is happening in their polling units as well as the announced election result of their own polling units after the election. Reports related to Election violence will be in real-time sent to Nigerian Police and INEC will be also notified in real-time if Report is Election conduct related (All this processes are done by an Artificial Intelligent module of the Platform).
Representatives of the Nigeriadecide.org initiative have been in Osun State for two weeks, sensitizing the people about the platform to help spread the word about the initiative. The effectiveness of the NigeriaDecide.org platform depends on the active participation of voters in the electoral process scheduled to take place tomorrow August 9.
This will require the submission of the election results announced in each polling unit by SMS to the NigeriaDecide platform for it to be stored on the secure server and displayed on the NigeriaDecide.org website for people to have a picture of how the polls is going in real-time., and for further processing in case it is evident that the polls was not transparent enough.
As part of efforts to make the people of Osun State aware of the platform and educate them on how to make use of the platform in ensuring that their choice of leadership is reflected in the results of the governorship scheduled to hold in the state come Saturday, some NigeriaDecide team members were on local radio programmes in the state
To be part of this citizen election monitoring platform, you must be registered to vote:
1 Send Situation of election in your polling unit to 09037346541 as it they happen,
2. Send in election results announced at their polling units in the following format via SMS: “party acronym and score” space “party acronym and score” until the last party and score e.g. aa50 apc53 acd52 pdp53 and send to 09037346541.
3. You can also send in situation reports concerning what is happening and how the election is going.
4. You can take pictures of the election result sheet pasted at the polling unit after the election.
5. You can also take audio and video recordings (Don’t do this if you are in a tensed polling unit, just send SMS) of the result announcement process in the polling unit.
6. Immediately, the message is passed through a sentiment detection algorithm to filter out malicious messages.
7. Genuine messages (situation reports and polling unit election results) are automatically available on the NigeriaDecide.org website (www.nigeriadecide.org) in real time
8. The Nigerian Police Force is immediately notified of security issues sent to the platform for quick response, if the report sent is violence related.
9. INEC is notified of the conduct of election if report is Election related after being checked by a Language analysis algorithm.
There have been rumors circulated recently that INEC officials announced on radio that no one is allowed to be with a mobile phone at polling units during election tomorrow. However, we want to dispel the fear of the people of Osun that everyone has a right to handle their mobile phones during the election. The INEC Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, on Wednesday at the stakeholders’ meeting, only said that no one is allowed to take pictures of ballot papers as this will compromise the open-secret ballot system of voting which the Nigerian constitution stipulates for elections, as directed by some parties to their supporters.
“To photograph the ballot paper will be a violation of the secrecy of the ballot. It is illegal and I will urge voters to disregard that directive.” [1]
We enjoin all Nigerians to work together to make coming elections free and fair.
The NigeriaDecide platform is powered by Innovative Technologies for Development Foundation (IT4D), a technology-inclined non-governmental organisation with focus on using technology to spur sustainable development in Africa, Nigeria especially. IT4D is the brain behind Nigeriadecide.org, many other technology related initiatives, and an MDG initiative to use mobile phones in ensuring Nigeria achieves MDGs 4 & 5 before the 2015 deadline.
for more information, contact info@nigeriadecide.org
[1]- http://www.punchng.com/