‘We plan to use facial recognition technology for elections’ – INEC

Nigeria’s electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has revealed that it intends to deploy the use of facial recognition in the conduct of future elections.

INEC said it is using technology to weed the country’s voter register of fraud and therefore is planning to commence the use of Electronic Voting Machines to update voter registration.

Prof Mahmood Yakubu, the Commission’s Chairman made this known while delivering the Keynote address at the Blueprint Newspaper’s 10th-anniversary celebration in Abuja, the country’s capital.

Mahmood represented by the Commission’s Director in charge of ICT, Engr. Chidi Nwafor was speaking on the topic “Technological innovation as an antidote for election rigging” said the commission has successfully deleted the information of over 15 million voters with duplicated information.

His words; “A credible voter’s register must ensure that a person only appears once in the register. So, we need to apply biometrics to the electoral process and we must start with biometric registration which will ensure the capacity to ensuring one man one vote.”

The commission said it has done a lot of work and has reached the conclusion “that rigging can come before, during and after the election and one thing is for us to find ways of stopping this. Few years ago, the entire processes involved in an election were rigged and the commission has moved to apply technology to this process.

“We plan to commence the use of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) and it is important to update the voter registration to include additional biometric requirement. It will no longer be fingerprint alone.

“We are going to include facial capture which will strengthen the system. So, if you have been planning to dodge the fingerprint, you will also have to plan to dodge the facial because we will check all those details”. He said.

INEC also confirmed that it is ready to start the continuous voter registration on June 28.