INTERVIEW: Nigerians Can Vote From Abroad If INEC Deploys Blockchain For Elections – Expert

James Olabode, a solutions architect and founding partner of Rubik Technologies, tells THE WHISTLER in this interview that the blockchain technology can eliminate electoral fraud and enable Nigerians to vote from anywhere in the world if adopted by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The IT professional also attributed long queues at INEC’s Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) collection centres across the nation to lack synergy in the country’s identification systems. Excerpts…

Can You Introduce Yourself And Your Organization?

In my field, what I do is that I’m a solutions architect, what that simply means is, just the way architects design houses for people, a solutions architect designs technology solution for the end users.

Now the solutions architect is able to envisage the various risk cases and anticipate certain lapses to make sure that you have a system that works, achieves all the objectives and then whatever the threats, he’s also able to mitigate treats. So basically, that’s what I do in RubikTech, I’m the founding partner and currently we have other partners, but I’m the managing partner for Rubik Technologies, so I oversee a lot of our solutions and products.

We oversee products or solutions for government agencies and also for end users. We have certain products; we have an ecommerce platform, we have a media streaming platform, we have an education/ learning platform, EdTech, and so on and so forth; so that’s basically all about me.

Has Nigeria Efficiently Taken Advantage Of Technology In Its Election Process?

With respect to the conversation about technology for election, this is something I taught a lot about and I am very interested in. My perspective would be, talking about it from the viewpoint of a solutions architect, imagining that beautiful solution that solves all the problems.

For me, regarding the best use of technology for election, we have not gotten there and honestly no country in the world has gotten there. It is the kind of technology in which everybody can be in their homes and they can vote and within minutes, the results are known. Where INEC wouldn’t have any headaches, there wouldn’t be a chance for rigging and people would be more encouraged to vote because, one of the biggest issues for younger people is having to stand in long queues and wait to cast their votes, so if there was a way to do it from home, more people would likely be interested.

Not just from home though, anywhere you are in the world, you can vote. Of course, the truth is that even the most developed societies in the world have not gotten there yet.  Technology will get there, there’s no doubt about that, it’s just time. And then, one of the interesting pieces of technology that would make that possible is this blockchain that we’ve been talking about, because the current lapses, that are not making it possible now, blockchain technology kind of addresses it.

No one can impersonate you and you can’t impersonate anyone. If you say you’re a voter, whatever result that goes into the system is coming from you. You can’t manipulate the system otherwise the entire thing would crumble. That’s essentially the concept of blockchain, everything is connected such that you can’t just pull one thing and say that you want to manipulate something else, everything would simply crumble, that is the simplest way to explain it.

However, with technology now, everyone is scared of hacking, so no one is really sure, but one very important thing about any form of election and governance generally is the importance of trust. The moment folks are able to trust that their votes count, and that whoever is in power was actually duly elected by the majority among them there would be trust in that system.

Another beautiful thing would be technology being able to ensure the trust, by making sure that the process is unimpeachable, then there’s the issue of our electoral act. Some people feel that we shouldn’t use technology for certain things, but the truth is, it was a very interesting conversation because for instance, if a group just feels like, ” Let’s push this thing through” and some people are like “No, we don’t trust the system”,  there will be doubt and that’s what played out in the American political space during Donald Trump’s time when he was trying to doubt the integrity of that system.

A lot of folks might just say, ‘Okay, the guy is saying that he doesn’t want to accept’ but what he was doing was casting a huge shadow on democracy itself, such that it encourages people to question the system, especially coming from Trump who is someone in a position of power, a lot of people are swayed by what he says. So, it allows doubt to enter people’s minds.

Governance and democracy will only continue to work where people believe that there will be justice, fair representation and that their views matter. So just like I was telling you, the best election would be the one where anyone can vote from anywhere in the world, wherever they are, at any time of the day, and everybody knows the result. But technology has not gotten there yet, it’s still at infancy.

And then you also know that even some of the most developed societies still use some old school methods, some of them do the mail-in ballots where citizens can send in their votes and they are sure that there won’t be tampering and all that, this is a step in the right direction,  and they are able to mail in their votes a long time before the deadline because their mailing system is reliable there.

So, these are some of the things that are possible, but you know that still doesn’t represent a perfect system, a perfect system would be one in which the mail doesn’t have to be delivered manually because that opens the system up for a lot of questions, which was also what happened over there (in America).

In What Other Ways Can Technology Advance Our Electoral System?

There are four main areas where technology can be used for election. Number one would be vote gathering, then number two would be result collation. Number three would be reporting, and number four would be something a bit interesting, threat mitigation.

What I mean by threat mitigation is that in Nigeria, we are still battling with the issue of ballot box snatching and the rest, so the question would be how can technology be used to mitigate such threats?

Also, generally, each of these can represent solutions in themselves, and I like to talk about our electoral act, for instance, what is its importance?

You realize that the electoral act tries it’s best to; first, solve the issue of threat mitigation because when you look at our elections, you find that some hoodlums would just go to the centers, scatter the place and run away with the ballot papers and boxes, but technology would cancel that. It also solves the problem of vote gathering.

Before now, people were afraid that some people were thumb-printing multiple times in place of other people to ensure a particular party or candidate would win, but now we realize you can’t do that because if you run away with the ballot boxes, it is not useful to you.

You can’t just go somewhere and start thumb-printing for multiple people because of the accreditation process.

Then the part that constituted a bit of an issue was the transmission process, which brings us to the second point, Result Collation. If you take time to look at the portal developed by INEC, you realize that it’s a very beautiful one, to tell you the truth, it’s not the best, but it is forward-thinking. It makes it such that anyone from anywhere in the world will have faith in our electoral processes.

I’ve taken the time to just examine the system and I saw that it has been designed such that for every ward, whatever the results in that ward, you will be able to upload it to the portal. Then aggregation is done at local government level, so that’s level 2, then level 3 is the state level, followed by level 4, the national level.

It also helps with threat mitigation in the sense that when someone was saying that some people would hack the system, or some of the issues we’ve had in the past, with respect to result tampering, this also helps in making sure that threat is handled, which in turn, helps with Reporting.  This is because with respect to reporting, you realize we no longer have a situation where we’re dealing with human error. 

Human error in the sense that maybe while collating results someone accidentally presses the wrong number because they are tired after having worked all day. Then of course there are politicians, who might just bribe someone and think that they would help them tamper with results, but at this point, collation and reporting are done automatically. The truth is that the whole system is not just left for the computer to handle, there are human beings that will vet to be sure that there is consistency, and the moment they approve whatever has been collated, it becomes final. Meaning that, Nigeria as a country is extensively using technology the way it should, at least within what is possible.

What Are The Main Challenging Facing INEC’s Current Election Process?

The fact that, one, folks can’t vote from their homes, and number two, for Nigerians that are abroad, there is no provision for them to participate. I know at a later stage, because of the contribution of the folks in the diaspora and because of the large number of Nigerians outside Nigeria, it is going to be considered, just like it is in America, where there is provision for citizens outside the country at that point in time to vote.

They indicate interest that they want to vote from wherever they are and mail in the consent form, after that they are able to mail in their vote when the time comes and I know Nigeria will get to that point too.

Then the third thing, which is like an annoyance in our system is the fact that if you voted in one LGA, and you relocate, you have to complete a change of location on your Voter’s Card because there is no movement on election day, which is kind of discouraging because people relocate a lot, it is possible you registered in a place where you were living last year and now you’ve moved houses, the question becomes, does it mean you won’t be able to vote, or you’d have to trek to the polling unit at which you registered or not? In the end, that method is not sustainable.

So, the issue is that, until we are able to address these three points; people being able to vote from their homes, people that are outside Nigeria being able to participate in the electoral process, and people who have changed their residences still being able to participate without hassle; technology is not being optimized yet.

However, you need to understand that there is a reason why the process is so tedious, and that is to build trust in the election process. It is to encourage people that if this election is so important to you, then you have to do everything you can to vote and it is once in 4 years, it’s not like it’s an everyday thing.

This is the part where the new sensitization exercises that have been organized, especially those targeted at young people who have a lot of things vying for their attention, comes into play.  

So, until technology is able to address the lapses in the current upgraded system that we have, the election process will not be as seamless as it can be. 

Do You Think Current Voter Registration Process Can Be Smoother? 

Of course, the process can be better. This idea that everyone has to troop to one place to get registered is exhausting, but in Nigeria our main challenge is that we don’t have a digital identity. If we had solved the problem of digital identity, that stress we’re all going through would not be necessary.

The reason is that the Nigerian systems are not integrated, an integrated system will make it such that you don’t need a BVN and the NIN would be there for you or if you’ve done BVN, you can use it to vote, you can use it for driver’s license, international passport and so on and so forth.

But this is not so because the system is not integrated and there is a different registration process for everything, I’m hoping that Nigeria will get to a point where we’ll be able to reintegrate all these broken or silo systems such that, you just do one registration and you’re given a digital identity as a Nigerian, and you can just present that number in the bank, and they have access to the schools you have gone to, your current picture, your current address, maybe even your current income and so on and so forth, that’s the point.

A beautiful similarity we can draw, would be the Social Security Number used in America. With the Social Security number, there’s a digital identity for almost all the Americans, so anywhere you want to go to, that Social Security Number can serve as a means of identification. I’m hoping Nigeria will get to a point where we will be able to integrate all these systems into one, and that’s the point of the NIN, but I know there’s a point in which they still have to integrate that with the financial system, integrate with the telecom system, integrate with the electoral system and integrate with the immigration system.

But the NIN would be like the base on which everything sits and I’m hoping that there will be a lot of support for this.

I know that the idea of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) and the national identity from the beginning was to have a single identity for everybody but subsequent governments probably were not interested and did not follow up. And so maybe it was until some of the new guys came in and felt ‘let’s try to finish this NIMC procedure’ that it was finally completed.

So basically, that’s what it is, but until that integration is done, we are still going to continue experiencing these stressful processes.

You’ve Spoken Highly Of The Current Election Process. How Confident Are You In It? Do You Think It Will Make The Voting Process More Transparent And Mitigate Electoral Fraud?

Yeah, so I’m going to give an estimate and I’ll say this. The current setup is an improvement on the previous ones and I think the improvement is stemmed from the fact that for many of the major lapses of the previous setup, there was an attempt to try to resolve them and that is what brought about this current setup.

So, looking at the major issues, I have faith in the system and I have faith that it is going to work. The reason for my faith is due to my understanding of the technology and how it’s been used and deployed.

You know, in any perfect system there will still be some human beings that would want to find some ways around it, but it is not going to be large scale. There aren’t going to be any large-scale attempts to compromise the entire system. It is going to be more difficult for whoever it is that wants to compromise the system and then if they want to compromise the system, the effect of that compromise is not going to be such that it can affect an entire local government or state.

It can only be isolated like a ward, and then the beauty is the fact that, for instance if you have a local government that has about 30 to 40 wards, if one ward is compromised out of the them, at least we can still trust the results from the other 39. So, the beautiful thing is the part I mentioned where there’s also a human part, in which there’s a staff member maybe at the state and local government level who will be able to validate the results coming from various places and say, ‘Okay, everything we’ve seen is correct, it tallies with whatever it is that is on ground’ and then approve. Then they also have the discretion to reject certain wards.

Imagine a particular ward is attacked, the election there has been compromised and would have to be repeated at a later date, which I think is something that we’ve seen in recent times where elections in certain local governments or wards were postponed because of compromise.

So that system in which there’s a validation process has always been there, but then what we are now going to be seeing is that there is a system that mitigates large scale compromise of election results, which is kind of encouraging, and making a lot of people believe their votes really count, but because a lot of folks are already used to the idea that they can’t trust elections, despite what the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the Chief Security Officers (CSOs) and everybody involved are doing, the skepticism is still there.

So, the main thing will now be at the end of the day, maybe after these elections people will see the result and see that their votes truly count, and then there will be more interest and more participation because people would see that the person in power is the person that was truly voted in and I think it is a slow gradual process.

Do You Think Future Administrations Will Uphold The Current System?

Something I really like about the Nigerian setup is that there are a lot of stakeholders so one person cannot just reject it, there is a standard. A standard that started from former President Goodluck Jonathan’s time, that is the 2015 election that brought the opposition into power.

Then there’s a new standard in which the current administration was able to, at least, improve on a lot of things so that people have more faith in the system. I’m hoping that the next administration will be interested in strengthening our electoral process, because that way it is strengthens our democracy, it strengthens people’s trust in governance. So, I’m hoping, because everything boils down to whoever it is that would be the next President.

If they don’t see the need to improve certain things, they would remain the same, but I know because of the many stakeholders, the foreign governments, that are involved there’s a deliberate interest to make sure we strengthen our democracy, so there’s an incentive.

I’m hoping that a new administration would see the incentive to be able to key into that progression into improving the current system, that this government is going to leave, such that what we are going to have maybe in the next four or eight years, might encourage participation from people in the diaspora.

You Spoke About A Few Ways That The Electoral System Can Be Improved. Can Some Of The Improvements Can Be Implemented Before The 2023 Election?

The truth is that for technology-based solutions, a lot of things are built in layers. What I mean by layers is this, you have the base, then on top of that base, you keep adding gradually until you have a perfect system and so when you look at the current architecture what we have now, it is built on that layered process.

Now I know that for the next set of improvements, it is going to go through the National Assembly again, because elections are very sensitive. It’s not just that INEC will sit somewhere and decide that they have deployed a new solution, it has to be backed by the laws of the land. So let us say something as a simple as encouraging people in the diaspora to vote, it can be an amendment to the current one, such that the new layer can then be added.

But with respect to what INEC is doing, it is possible.

Do You See Nigerian Leaders Accepting Some Of The Technological Advancements You’ve Proposed? For Example, Diaspora Voting?

So, this is something I believe and depending on who the next leader is, I see a lot of things being possible in the sense that as long as our new set of leaders see usefulness and are progressive, a lot of things can be allowed.

However, if they don’t see those things as being useful, they won’t be allowed, it won’t be made into something that will be sent to the National Assembly to start reading, it wouldn’t even get to that point.

But I’m hoping that the new set of leaders we have, and also in view of the progress that we have to keep making as a society, will see the usefulness of some of these advancements. It also goes to the point where the communities, the CSOs can put pressure on the government because if you look at this Electoral Act, it is a by-product of a lot of external pressure.

And so now that there is a success, if the CSOs can still continue putting pressure on the next set of leaders when they come into power to make sure they improve the system, that will be good for all of us.

If we have a very progressive set of leaders, of course they will be happy to make sure we can accommodate diaspora voting. They will be happy because they will see the usefulness of the people in the Diaspora and more so because of the money coming from the diaspora. If you look at the money we are getting from the folks there, it is almost more than any foreign direct investments, so if they are able to vote, they will be more encouraged because they will feel like they are part of the success or progress of the country.

But regarding the idea of voting from home, even for developed societies, it will still take time however, what I think INEC can do is, instead of having only one day for voting, can we spread it out? Instead of making it just one day to vote for the President, can it be spread out over a week or maybe a month? To eliminate the queues and make the process easier generally.

A constraint of this might be expenses because you have to keep a lot of ad-hoc staff for a long time so election costs would also be very high, but still I think it is something that is worth considering because just having the one day is inconvenient.