By Osita Chidoka
As of 6 am Nigerian time the Kenya Independent Electoral and Boundary Commission had tallied results from 253 out of 291constituencies. William Samoei Ruto is leading with 51.18% of the votes cast while Raila Odinga is at 48.14%. The winner needs 50% plus 1 vote to coast home. With 38 constituencies to go, the IEBC will likely announce the final result by midday today.
Some quick lessons for Nigeria
1. The upload of results from polling units is an excellent innovation but we need to go further and upload the following:
(a) Form EC 8B the ward collation results from the Residential Areas.
(b) Form EC 8C the Local Government Collation result.
(c) Upload the collated results for the State House of Assembly, House of Reps and (d) Senate election after collation and declaration.
2. Upload the form EC 8D state collation results as signed by Party Agents before proceeding to Abuja.
The delay in Kenya where all the Polling stations results were online since 11 August and collation from the 46,229 has taken about 6 days will not augur well for Nigeria.
Though INEC is usually faster than the IEBC but we are now confronted with a new system where parties can tabulate results from INEC uploads.
3. To improve transparency, the BVAS back-end should automatically collate the Polling Unit results for the ward level and Print copies for validation and signing by ward Agents of the political parties. That will ensure that the result at the back-end of the BVAS is consistent with the results on the BVAS tablets. This is key for post-election issues.
Like I said in my last post on Kenya elections. The election has been won and lost and the winner is clear.
I will in due course share my thoughts about how he won and lessons for candidates in a new transparent electoral system.
