The Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE) wants the next election, which is next year, to use the electronic voting processes; this they say will ensure credibility.

NSE has recommended that the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) use the Nigerian Communication Satellite (NigComSat) e-Voting system; and is willing to offer technical support to INEC.

President of the Society, Eng. Mustapha Balarabe Shehu, said the country could save money by using an e-voting system.

“We have successfully used the NigComSat e-voting platform to elect our executive members twice and we believe that INEC could also use the platform in the coming election. Government is already tackling the issue of power and broadband penetration. Once that is settled, I believe the next thing is for INEC to key in into the e-voting platform. We have tested it twice and we believe that it is workable,” he said.

He explained how the society conducted its election using the NigComSat e-Voting platform.

“Prelude to the e-voting, an e-registration took place a day before where all eligible engineers had their data captured and saved on a database. Biometric details included photographs, fingerprints among others for Radio Frequency Identification (RFID).

“In all, 2,048 engineers were captured during the registration and 1,574 voted eventually. These figures surpassed those of previous year which recorded 1,313 on the register while 1,303 voted,” said Shehu.

He advised INEC to use the system on a small-scale for a pilot test and then eventually expand it to cover the entire country.