According to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), only about half of the country’s polling units have a 3G network capable of transmitting election results electronically.
Mr Ubale Maska, Executive Commissioner, Technical Services, stated this in his address to the House of Representatives on Friday in Abuja.
According to previous reports, the commission was invited to brief lawmakers after an uproar erupted in the house on Thursday while members were debating clause 52 of the Electoral Amendment Bill.
It should be noted that the House was divided on the provision for electronic transmission of election results.
The house could not move forward because some members supported electronic results transmission while others insisted on manual transmission, claiming that not all polling units had network coverage.
In response to lawmakers’ questions, Maska stated that the commission conducted an analysis of the country’s 119,000 polling units in 2018.
According to him, approximately 50.3 percent of polling units have 3G and 2G network coverage, while parts of the remaining 46.7 have only 2G and the remainder have no coverage at all.
He explained that only polling units with 3G network coverage could electronically transmit election results and that results could be uploaded in 2G areas and then moved to a 3G area.
Regarding the possibility of hacking the process, Maska stated that no system can be completely free of hacker activity.
He was responding to a question from a lawmaker about the agency’s ability to prevent hackers from interfering with the process.
Maska recalled that the 2016 presidential elections in the United States were widely believed to have been hacked, and that hacker activity was reported on a daily basis.
Rep. Femi Gbajabiamila, Speaker of the House, stated that the house would revert to the Committee of the Whole to consider clause 52 and other clauses yet to be considered.
