With the introduction of the BVAS, there was some respite that this election was going to be as free and fair as possible.

Traditionally, Nigerian elections has always been riddled with corruption and massive rigging. The mantra was, "you better rig to win, or rig not to be rigged out"

It was disheartening that even if you had 100% support of the electorates some concerted efforts had to be put in place to ensure you don't get rigged out.

But the BVAS seemed to have given hope to some people who erstwhile were apathetic to voting because they felt their votes will never count.

But the violence related to ballot box snatching, ballot box stuffing seem not to be going anywhere as we see with countless reports of this in many PU across the country.

The Solution

The only solution is for INEC to adapt and adopt electronic voting.

Have voting machines like ATM machines. Once you are accredited, you are issued an ID number and Passcode.

You walk over to the machine punch in your ID number and Passcode and the ballot appears and you thumbprint on your candidate and go home.

Your vote is electronically transmitted to the server, while also being registered at the PU for PU announcement at close of voting.

This way, we will never have issues like overvoting or ballot box stuffing, snatching, and other such related issues.

Drawbacks
1. Literacy level of electorates. This can be solved with massive voter education on how the voting process is done. Or have a hybrid of ballot papers with the electronic, and have people who feel confident about the electronic voting use the machines while the rest use the ballot papers.

2. Cost of acquiring said machines. While paper might be cheaper meantime, but it is not in the long run. The machines can be reused in several voting cycles and eventually the cost will balance out. However, we can't put a price on the people being able to get the leaders they truly want.

3. Hacking of the machines and manipulation of the results. This could be the fear for some people because of lack of confidence in INEC. But if INEC is uncompromised, the security protocols can ensure there is not such a manipulation.

Hmm