The Connected Development (CODE), a civil society organisation, has said its observations of the just concluded Kenya general election revealed that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) needs to review its voting hours.
The Director, Democracy and Governance, CODE, Mr. Emmanuel Njoku, said on Wednesday in Abuja at the official launch of CODE’s annual report detailing its various interventions and efforts to institutionalise governance accountability and transparency in Nigerian and Africa.
According to him, INEC’s review of voting hours was recommended because if not done, more than 30 million eligible registered voters could be disenfranchised in the 2023 elections.
He said that this was because Kenya used the same Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) device and also transmitted their results electronically just like Nigeria and that the process was practically the same while the only difference is in the numbers.
“Kenya’s voter register is just 22.1m and the voter turnout was 65 percent, which was about 14m votes, in Nigeria we are expecting around 45 percent voter turnout which is close to 40m people.
“Yet Kenyan polls open as early as 6am and close by 5pm that is 11 hours for a voter register of just under 2.1m what that means is that everybody gets to vote. However, persons in Nigeria with higher voters’ polls open for just six hours from 8:30 and closes by 2:30pm that is just six hours for a voter register of 95m people.
“With the BVAS, it takes a person two minutes to accredit and voting, mathematically, if it takes one person two minutes to go through the process to vote, it means in an hour, it will take just about 30 persons to vote,” Njoku said.
