African Democratic Congress (ADC) chieftain, Barr. Kenneth Okonkwo, has urged the Senate to fully remove sections permitting manual transmission of election results.
On Tuesday, during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today, Okonkwo requested that results be only electronically transmitted straight from polling stations to collation centres using BVAS to prevent manipulation.
“Once they put that law that you must transmit from the polling unit, I am okay. So any polling officer would not leave the polling unit until the results from that polling unit has been transmitted,” the actor-turned politician stated.
He further argued that elections should be annulled where electronic transmission fails, warning that by adding collation manually as a provisio has robbed off everything thought to have been gained.
According to him, “the House of Representatives should go further to say that where it is not possible to transmit from the polling unit, that election should be cancelled.”
Responding to concerns over whether cancelling an election due to failed electronic transmission would be fair, Okonkwo maintained that the entire electoral process revolves around credible results, adding that once it is compulsory to do electronic accreditation, what then would stop electronic transmission of results from the same polling booth.
“The reason you are doing simultaneous accreditation and voting is for a transparent result. If you do all these things to get a fraudulent result, what have you gained? You have actually emboldened the criminals. The only problem we have in this country is fraudulent elections.
“On the day we have free and fair elections in Nigeria, 20 years after that, we would become a superpower nation. America is sustained today because power lies with the people.”
He described those who insist on circumventing electronic transmission of results as the real enemy in the polity stressing that such persons have always benefited from fraudulent electoral process, which must be halted.
He wondered why a sane Nigerian would like to blur a transparent process by introducing opaqueness in the process, except for selfish reasons.
