By Lawrence Olaoye
The UNDP Democratic Governance for Development (DGD II) project in collaboration with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) will today begin a two day international conference on credible elections in the country.
The event billed to hold at the Sheraton Hotels in Abuja is to take stock of ICT solutions for innovative approaches to support credible elections from a broad perspective of election stakeholders.
Speaking on the Conference, DGD II Project Director, Dr. Mourtada Deme said: “In any field, the role of ICT should be to improve upon the quality of services that can be delivered in the absence of technology. The role of ICT in elections should be to provide more universal and equal suffrage, to ensure the secrecy of the vote, and to accurately and credibly determine the will of the people. If appropriately introduced, it can bring major benefits to an electoral process but it cannot by itself replace the trust in a country’s electoral process framework”.
The Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu; the INEC Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, and leading ICT and election experts from Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Zambia, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal and the UK including representatives of Google, One World and Ushahidi are confirmed to participate in the conference.
DGD II is a joint donor funded project managed by UNDP in support of deepening democracy in Nigeria. The project is funded with contributions from the European Union (EU), the UK Department for International Development (DFiD), the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
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