Recently, INEC has threatened to ban the use of mobile phones, cameras and other similar gadgets at the polling units during the forthcoming 2019 general elections. To further make good this threat, the REC of Osun State has already issued a statement suspending the use of such devices at the polling centres on Saturday, 22nd. However, while such a practice does not contravene any law, I let alone the Electoral Law, the only reason advanced by INEC as being responsible for this ban is 'vote buying'. INEC alleges that some voters snap the ballot papers after voting and send such photograps to politicians in order to be paid for that.
How dump, naive and lame does that sound!
Statiscally, While there are over 90 million voters in Nigeria at the end of August, 2018, the number of smart phone users in Nigeria by the end of this year is estimated at less than 22 million.
Out of this number, we can assume that it won't be a faux pas to expect a negligible 10-20% of the active phone users who will go to such election points with their phones.
Talking of Cameras and other devices as well will leave us with the thinking that less than 0.1 percent of the electorates would want to do so.
The risk of losing or damaging such devices won't let many persons go out on the election day with such valuables.
For the sake of fairness and transparency, I would have expected INEC to even propose for inclusion in the electoral law, as amended, that elections should be declared right from the poling units and electorate with recording and capturing devices should capture such pieces of valuable information for record purposes.
If INEC should stop voters from taking snap shorts of their election results, would they also stop approved observers from doing the same thing?
This rule is obviously draconian, barbaric and not in the best interest of free, fare and credible elections. The order is also an infringement on the rights of Nigerians, and therefore, should be rounded off, thrown into the waste bin and discarded.
While I won't aduce the opposite, and of course, negative motives as being the underlining reason behind this directive, I think the gain of employing smart devices in our electioneering processes far outweighs the loss.
Nigerians should rise up and say no to INEC on the prohibition of the use of smart phones in our poling centers. Together, we can help INEC to truly be 'independent'.

Your statistics about the Number of smart phone users is very wrong ..there are over 90 million unique smart phone unique detections across all 4 mobile telcos in Nigeria