Opinion: Nigeria’s election shows that technology won’t save broken democracies
Protesters hold banners during a demonstration against the suspension of governorship elections in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, on March 11. By Patrick Gathara Patrick Gathara Email Bio Follow March 19 at 2:17 PM In the run-up to the recent elections in Nigeria, an article in Quartz Africa declared that “it’s become much harder to rig elections in Nigeria thanks to technology.” Looking on from about 3,000 miles away, Kenyans would be excused for stifling a laugh.
One of the impetuses for the adoption of technology was to reduce the violence associated with elections. By making the polls more transparent and tamper-proof, the thinking went, technology would mitigate the trust deficit that most elections management bodies on the continent suffered from, leading to a higher likelihood of acceptance even by losing candidates and consequently less violence.
Kenya’s past two presidential elections are a case in point. Following the violence that accompanied the disputed 2007 election, the country had opted to adopt technology to avoid a repeat.
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