BVAS TECHNOLOGY STOOD IN THE WAY OF VESTED POLITICAL INTERESTS

Basil Okoh

MaTaZ ArIsInG

The Nigerian government and its officials dread technology, all forms of it. They hate the accuracy, efficiency and correct accounting that technology brings and offers to the management of difficult situations and complications.

Technology demands responsibility from officials to do the right things and thereafter held to account. Nigeria’s officialdom cannot cope with or tolerate the accuracy and integrity which technology demands in transactions.

It is the abuse and rejection of technology that is at the centre of the present dissonance in INEC and the failure of the election in Nigeria. The crux of the dispute over Nigeria’s presidential and other election results is the sabotage by officials of the BVAS technology adopted and deployed to bring efficiency and accuracy to the 2023 and future elections. But it was sabotaged and eventually bypassed by everyone at different levels of authority.

INEC’s BVAS technology didn’t fail, rather It was the officials of INEC that sabotaged their own installed and robust technology and made it fail the nation at a critical moment in its electoral history. So it was not the failure of technology that upset the elections but the disruption by officials employed to manage and operate the BIVAS technology.

In Nigeria, sabotage of technology for personal or group gain is the norm. It is in fact a common occurrence carried out always to sabotage operations to reap personal benefits arising from the chaos and disruption.

Nigerian Seaports are congested because import scanning machines are put out of use by the same officers paid to use it to enhance their own work efficiency. They do not want machines to bring speed and accuracy to replace their plodding inefficiency because gains are made from plodding inefficiency.

As long queues form and congestions arise, importers wanting to avoid rising import costs from demurrage payments are forced to bribe Custom Officials to have their imports cleared.

The entire economy suffers from overladen ports just as the entire country is plunged now into a state of flux and enmeshed in a constitutional crisis because officials sabotaged the BVAS technology put in place at exorbitant cost to bring efficiency and accuracy to the elections.

The INEC officials themselves were unsettled because BVAS was procured to do the work of voter recording and collation efficiently and accurately during polling. For INEC officials, this was a hostile connivance to deny them of their supervening powers over the elections and the authority of determining and pronouncing who wins or loses elections.

That power of determining and pronouncing who wins elections comes with so much profit that most INEC officials would rather destroy the BVAS than lose that authority.

Losing the power of determining who wins elections will unsettle the existing social and political order and politicians will not be beholden to INEC officials, neither will politicians be compelled to offer bribes to INEC officials to manipulate election results.

Such huge sums change hands during elections that BVAS will destroy Nigeria’s election economy. Politicians and INEC officials will not stand for that.

BVAS removes the power to determine election results from INEC’ officials. The BVAS will bring devastating exactitude to the elections in Nigeria and officials will have no room to wiggle and reap bribes from desperate politicians seeking power.

Nigerians at every turn, undermine and sabotage technology to destroy the integrity of operations and systems. This is done in order for individuals to thrive from the disorder and chaos that the absence of technology, accounting and verification systems create.

For technology to stand in the way of vested political interests, that technology has to give way or be destroyed.

For Nigeria, technology always threatens the grossly pre-bended social order. Our political champions thrive better in chaos and disruptions. Efficiency and accuracy will reveal too many unpleasant truths.

Ask yourself: where did the millions of registered voters previously declared in elections disappear to in this election cycle? Except otherwise shown as a form of voter suppression, they disappeared with the truths revealed by BVAS technology.

The culture of rejection of technology pervades every aspect of our economy and social life. It is why we will never accept to use weights and measures in our local markets. We thrive better in the foggy world of uncertainty or think we do.

Technology brings accuracy and integrity to systems and processes. If we cannot find a way to undermine that integrity and accuracy, we destroy the technology altogether.

Mahmoud Yakubu and his technology crew, unable to undermine the integrity of the BVAS election technology, had to find a way to bypass or destroy it in order to make it serve vested political interests.

Make no mistake, the masses of the country are themselves very receptive to technology and embrace it to ease the drudgery of every day life, but government officials and government parastatals reject technology outright, preferring to control and determine the outcome of its work, sabotage its accuracy and factor personal gains from its processes and outputs.

The entire edifice of the Nigerian state is built on corrupt foundations and a critical aspect of the corruption industry is the sabotage of all technology designed or operated to automate processes and improve systems.

Interference and sabotage pervades the entire economic and political system, destroying efficiencies all across the economy and removing the possibility of creating economic dynamism or the development of technology skills.

@basilokoh.

MaTaZ ArIsInG

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER NOW

Support MATAZ ARISING’ journalism of integrity and credibility.

Good journalism ensure the possibility of a good society, an accountable democracy, and a transparent government.

We ask you to consider making a modest support to this noble endeavour.

0.00USD

Amount
0.00

TEXT AD: To advertise here – Email ad@matazarising.com

LATEST POSTS