Nigeria’s former president, Goodluck Jonathan has urged government officials to ensure that the inadequacies which occurred during the 2019 general elections in the country would not reoccur in 2023.
He made this known while he was delivering a book presentation recently in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
Jonathan iterated that generally, African countries need to create systems that would increase the credibility of their national electoral bodies.
He further explained that the numerous cases of rejection of election outcomes in the country are due to the fact that electorates do not trust those in charge of conducting the elections.
According to Jonathan, “Parliamentarians who have won elections to go to the National Assembly should take a look at what happened in 2019 elections. We must modify our laws to make sure that in 2023 elections, some of these things don’t repeat.
“If democracy must endure in Africa, then the process leading to elections and the conduct of elections must be done in a way that people will have confidence in the system.
“I believe that in Africa, for us to move forward, we have no choice but to look forward to full electronic voting.
“This is debatable because a number of people are afraid that somebody hiding in his toilet can change the figures by pressing one or two buttons on a device, but we can’t run away from this. “It is the ultimate and we must get there. But before we get there, we have to make sure that Nigeria and other countries must come out with a minimum and acceptable standards of constituting our electoral management bodies, in a way that will inspire the confidence of the people.
“As a nation, we must move forward. Nigeria is a very important country in Africa and we must set the pace in some of these areas. We must not wait for other countries to come and teach us how we should elect our people.”
He subsequently made reference to his trip to South Africa as an election observer, adding that the absence of quarrels was because South Africans knew that their electoral process was transparent, hence they trusted the conduct of the electoral officials.
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