David Mark Was a Senator For Twenty Years. Why Did He Not Pass Legislation For Real-Time Transmission of Election Results?
David Mark served as a Senator for twenty good years. He was the most powerful Senate President for eight out of those twenty years. If real-time transmission of election results was possible, why did he not pass such a law when he held sway at the National Assembly?
Why did he wait until he was out of the National Assembly, and out of power, before coming up with this unrealistic proposal for real-time transmission of results?
While electronic voting and electronic transmission of election results are very feasible and are provided for in the amended Electoral Act, which every patriotic Nigerian should support, at 77 years of age, it is believed that Senator David Mark has the experience and knowledge of the fact that no country on Earth has real-time transmission of results.
This man was the Communications Minister, for goodness' sake. He knows how easy it is to hack telecommunications systems. One of his fellow African Democratic Congress chieftains, Nasir el-Rufa'i, even confessed to having an associate who hacked the National Security Adviser's phone.
If these sets of opposition leaders can hack the communications system of the highest security official in the land, what is to stop them, or a foreign power, or even terrorists, from hacking the server of the Independent National Electoral Commission and imposing a Manchurian Candidate on Nigeria?
It was David Mark's predecessor as Communications Minister (not David Mark, as widely thought) who said, 'Telephones are not for the poor.' And now, in a country with massive telecommunications blind spots, Mr Mark and his fellow travellers are requesting real-time transmission of election results?
Name one country that does it. The opposition often cites Brazil and Estonia, but that is a fallacy.
No country on Earth has real-time transmission of results, including Brazil and Estonia. In those countries, results are sent electronically only AFTER polls have closed, which is what we want in Nigeria.
In none of those countries do you have votes sent to the collation centre in real time when you vote. The whole process is done only AFTER polls close.
And even in those countries listed by these people, their laws make provision for MANUAL voting and MANUAL transmission of election results AFTER polls close if the electronic system fails.
For example, in Brazil, Resolution Number 23.669 (RESOLUÇÃO Nº 23.669, DE 14 DE DEZEMBRO DE 2021) provides for manual voting and transmission as a backup, because common sense dictates that there will be areas in that large country where Internet and power outages will occur.
Even America, Starlink's home country, does not have real-time transmission of results—ditto for the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.
Amazon Web Services, the world's largest provider of cloud computing services, has suffered multiple cyberattacks that have led to serious security breaches and, at times, global outages. And even Senator Mark, as a military veteran, ought to know that both the U.S. military and the Russian armed forces have suffered numerous successful cyber attacks, even as they have the most advanced systems on Earth.
Being that the above is a fact, how on Earth can Mr Mark say with a straight face that INEC should guarantee what even the most powerful military forces on Earth cannot promise?
As long as every party has agents at every polling unit and the form EC8A signs, rigging an election is impossible. The problem is that some of these parties are not organised enough to have party agents at polling units, and they want to cure their deficiency and unpreparedness by requesting unrealistic amendments to the Electoral Act.
Reno Omokri
Gospeller. Deep Thinker. #TableShaker. #1 Bestselling author of Facts Versus Fiction: The True Story of the Jonathan Years. Hodophile. Hollywood Magazine Humanitarian of the Year, 2019. Business Insider Influencer of the Year 2022. 21st Most Talked About Person in Africa, 2024.
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