No I’m not running for President (not just yet!).
I have been thinking about the elections that will take place in Nigeria in 24 months. Imnakoya has a great post which looks towards 2011 elections and what needs to be done at the national level. He concluded:
When the people are well primed, they become empowered and will work to ensure their votes are counted. They will be ready to resist fraud at the polling stations.
Reading Imnakoya’s post helped me form my thoughts around what role the web could play in the next elections. I believe the web can play a major role in empowering people with information during the campaign and could prove to be very effective and powerful. For example, Ushahidi was used in India’s recent elections with the aim of increasing transparency and accountability.
As we approach the elections, we don’t have much time. We need to start thinking about how the Nigerian web community can be an integral part of the election process by making the dissemination of information easier and transparent.
It is reassuring to see the INEC website had the full 2007 election results; however I still preferred to use this old tripod site. The navigation of the site proved to be much easier.
Looking forward to 2001, there is an obvious problem, Will INEC happily share data with the Nigerian public online during the election process? Particularly when the elections gets really heated up. As expected, I couldn’t find any info on the recent Ekiti (failed) elections on the website.
I don’t have answers to all the questions but we need to get the ball rolling.
Opportunities for Nigerian web community
- Develop Interactive election maps with history: examples are available on CNN , BBC and Thinkghana
- Political blogs: This is probably already well covered in Nigerian blogsphere. A good example is PoliticalWire
- Online site with manifesto for each party in one place and comparison of political ideologies and policies. Examples are KenyaVote and Kenya Elections
- Election news aggregator. A good example is SA elections
Let’s be clear, I’m not saying the above will be an indication of whether the elections will be successful or not. I’m not saying the opposition will make a better government. We need to vote for leaders who will deliver on their election manifesto. I believe we can help channel that message.
If you have other ideas, please feel able to add your comments below.
Great ideas. I can tell you for a fact that Imnakoya has been seriously thinking about such things. Maybe its time to get these ideas implemented?
— solomonsydelle · 15 May 2009, 16:18 · #
AL, great post! one of the electoral challenges we have is that the choice we have is to choose one thief over the other. That being said, we can use technology to play our own part. We will need a little commitment from our Nigerian ‘common man’ for impact to be felt.
Have you heard of FrontlineSMS.com ? it is Very similar to Ushahidi which we can use to report elections from wards and will be direct collated at a central point. I actually know the founder and he is willing to help if we find NGO’s that are willing to use these things.
I registered the domain WhichWayNigeria.org for these kinds of discussions but I have no time to carry forward the project.
If you have any ideas, lets see how we can bring this together!
— OoTheNigerian · 16 May 2009, 12:36 · #
Thanks for linking to my post on Grandiose Parlor.
It is time for some serious forward thinking regarding Internet-facilitated civil processes in Nigeria now that a strong possibility exists for the foreign-based to vote during the 2011 elections. Without the Internet, majority of us will be in the dark regarding the home country.
I’m eager catch your readers’ impressions on idea. Cheers.
— imnakoya · 19 May 2009, 18:22 · #
Nice… Now is the time to begin to pool together all the technical, financial and human resources required to at least minimize, if not eradicate, the silent disefranchisement of the Nigerian Common Man
— NaijaBoi · 23 May 2009, 11:59 · #
Lovely article, I think the easiest way for us to contribute is by Social media or Citizen Journalism; we use sites like
Twitter, NaijaPulse, Nowpublic, Newsvine or we float a new one for the show.
People anywhere can report what they see and We can have special people bring in the official stories as they come in; that should go a long way.
— Ademola · 26 May 2009, 02:13 · #
Maybe we need to have a technology conference. There have been several conferences around web commerce and startups in Nigeria. If that amount of brain power is gathered to come up with products that can be used to save the next elections I believe we can make a difference.
— Dejo · 28 June 2009, 23:00 · #