Working toward this ambitious and righteous
goal, Nigeria implemented a biometric voter verification system for its most
recent federal elections held toward the end of March 2015. Muhammadu
Buhari defeated incumbent Goodluck Jonathan by the narrowest of margins,
earning just under 54% of the popular vote. For this election, every Nigerian
voter was supposed to receive a permanent voter card that stores his or her
biometric information for the purposes of authentication at the polls.
While Nigeria has already had an Automated
Fingerprint Identification System for a few years, the old system was only
used to create a digital register. This was designed to prevent multiple voting
at the polls by eliminating doubles from the voter register. With the new
system, the identity of the voter is more accurately authenticated to prevent
ballot stuffing from “ghost” votes, underage voting, and otherwise illegal or
unauthorized votes.
Unfortunately, the 2015 elections in
Nigeria were marred with a number of issues and these were already demonstrated
in an early
mock polling held a few weeks before the actual election itself. In that
trial run, held in 225
polling units and 358 voting centres across the country, many of the
identity card readers took as many as 20 minutes for the verification process.
What's more, over 40 percent of the voters who participated in the early test
were not identified by the system. They reportedly had valid voter smart cards,
but they were not recognized.
These issues were not suitably rectified
ahead of the March 28 election day. The election itself faced several
technical glitches that resulted in the need to extend
voting to the following day. Again, the verification process simply took
too long or didn't work at all. The adoption of e-voting technology in general
and biometric authentication in particular has been a challenge for the African
continent with significant problems experienced by other elections, like those
in Ghana in 2012, as well.
The causes of these problems in Nigeria are
similarly mirrored across other African democracies. The malfunctioning
technology can be traced back to poor implementation by electoral commissions,
not performing the needed due diligence well ahead of Election Day. The lack of
proper infrastructure is another concern, like the lack of reliable electricity
access. In Nigeria in particular, the elections were also troubled with attacks
by the Boko Haram terrorist group, who disrupted many of the day's proceedings.
Another big issue with biometric voter
registration and authentication? Dirty
hands. The fact of the matter is that biometric fingerprint readers will
always work best with clean hands. However, a significant proportion of the
Nigerian population have dirty hands from working the gardens or cooking over a
charcoal or firewood stove. Their hands can be dirty or oily when they reach
the polling stations and this can create problems for the biometric
authentication process.
For this reason, as popular as fingerprint
readers may be in the context of biometric authentication, alternative
technologies may need to considered for regions such as Nigeria. There are
promising possibilities afforded by iris scans, for example, though the
technology may be more costly than fingerprint scanners.
