Today this type of deliberation and election of leaders be at the village or national level cannot be practiced.
A transition from this form of government to a system where each community elected officials to represent their interest through some form of suffrage based on defined criteria was born. This gave birth to a system of indirect or representative democracy.
Nigeria has witnessed various variants of this system of democracy, from patriarchal democratic gerontocracies to monarchical rule in centralized societies, through military dictatorship and representative governments.
The common aspiration, which Nigeria used, is to establish a democratic system of government based on common values shared by people throughout the world community, irrespective of cultural, political, social and economic differences.
Thus, the creation of a democracy that is appropriate to Nigeria conditions is one of the challenges facing Nigeria in the 21st century.
Historically, voting has been through the ballot boxes. However, with the difference of the information revolution technology, which is now being used to transform election process in several different ways: in political fund raising, citizen participation, political debates, news groups discussion, conducting opinion polls, the enhancement of the democratic process, are all in voting with the help of information and communication technology.
Political parties can use the internet to access huge data bases of potential voters and with the availability of such data, it is easy for such individual or group to be targets for political fundraising.
The internet is one of the mechanisms adopted by parties to reach a large constituent.With the use of mailing lists on the internet, it is now easier to reach people at very minimal costs. The 2008 United States presidential election was a good example of the role of ICT in the political process. President-elect Barack Obama has earned the accolade “the first internet president”. This has to do with the way he used the internet in his campaign. He successfully used Youtube, the online video site to display several campaign clips, which served as the primary platform for preaching his message of change.
On Facebook, the social networking site, he reached large constituents, who gave small donations to support his online fundraising efforts. It is estimated that he had N2.4million online “friends” compared to John Macain’s 623,000. This is an unprecedented and historic online outreach and fundraising record that helped propelled him to the first elected black President of the United States of America.
Today, a number of developing countries are at various stages in the deployment of ICT in monitoring their elections. For example, countries such as, Brazil and Chile have successfully deployed voting machines to aid in the election process. These are countries, where the majority of the people live on less than a dollar per day. The deployment of the voting machine has resulted in fast voting and the counting of votes.
It reduces disputes in results declaration, since representatives of political parties can check the machine and be satisfied with its performance before the actual election. Also, the use of voting machines reduces the job of returning officers.
The first step in the successful deployment of ICT in election in Nigeria is for Nigerian government to strive to achieve e-government. E-Government brings the government closers to the people, when the people are closed to the government; it is easier for them to move to the next level by experimenting with e-election, a variant of e-government.
Today, Nigeria is a long way from achieving both. But, transformation along this path exists in Nigeria. The widespread availability of the internet in almost all states in the country, the increasing number of cyber cafes, and the availability of personel can make it technologically possible for the nation to move in the direction of electronic election.
The success of deploying ICT in election in Nigeria depends to a large extent on the e-readiness of citizens. This is the readiness of a nation’s citizens to participate as proactive agents in the development of their countries creative deployment of ICT in the election process with definitely help curb rigging and get more people involved in the electoral process, and hence, a way to choose credible candidate.
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Quelle/Source: Osun Defender, 15.03.2012
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