Ogona Anita
The Premise: There is a glaring hypocrisy in how we are governed. When the state wants to collect revenue, it employs the sharpest, most modern tools available. It demands our biometric data, links our bank accounts, enforces digital identification, and tracks every transaction to ensure tax compliance.
Yet, when the time comes to decide who manages that revenue—who leads this nation—we are asked to tolerate archaic systems, manual collation, and “technical glitches.”
It is time to speak the Bitter Truth: If we enact laws using technology to drive tax compliance by the citizen, we must do the exact same to decide who leads this nation.
The POS Paradox
Look around you. In every corner of this country, from the high-rise distincts of the capital to the most remote village, there is a Point of Sale (POS) terminal.
These small machines are the unsung heroes of our economy. They rely on telecommunications networks to instantly move money from a cardholder to a merchant. We trust these machines with our livelihoods. We trust them with our savings. The network is robust enough to process millions of transactions daily, instantly verifying solvency and identity.
The question is simple: If a POS machine can transmit a notification of a ₦50 charge to a central server in milliseconds, why can the same technology not transmit a “1 vote” count to a central election server?
The Double Standard of Efficiency
When the government seeks tax compliance, “network failure” is rarely an acceptable excuse for non-payment. They have integrated systems that track Value Added Tax (VAT), Stamp Duty, and income tax with ruthless efficiency.
They know who we are (Biometrics/NIN/BVN).
They know where our money is.
They have the tech to extract it.
However, during elections, we are told that real-time transmission is “too risky” or “technologically unfeasible.” We are forced to rely on paper sheets, manual entry, and human movement—processes that are notoriously prone to manipulation, theft, and “human error.”
This is not a lack of capacity; it is a lack of will. It is a refusal to apply the same standard of transparency to power that is applied to the citizen’s pocket.
The Proposal: The “One-Touch” Democracy
We do not need to reinvent the wheel. The infrastructure is largely already here. We propose a legislative overhaul that mandates the following:
- The Financial-Electoral Parity Law A law stating that the voting infrastructure must meet the same technological standards as the banking infrastructure. If the banking network is up, the voting network is up.
- Decentralized, Digital Voting Points Just as POS agents act as decentralized banks, secure, biometric-enabled voting terminals can be deployed using the same cellular networks. These devices would:
Authenticate: Use the same biometric data (fingerprint/face) used for banking and ID.
Record: Log the vote encrypted on the device.
Transmit: Send the result immediately to the Centre (National Server) and a public blockchain for transparency.
Print: Issue a receipt (paper trail) just like a POS transaction receipt, which the voter drops in a box for audit purposes.
- Real-Time Ledger When you transfer money, you get a debit alert. When you vote, the nation should see a “credit alert” on the public scoreboard. No dark rooms, no midnight collation centers. Just data, flowing as freely as our currency.
Addressing the Skeptics
Critics will argue about hacking and security. But let us ask: Do we stop using online banking because of hackers? No. We build better firewalls. We use encryption. We use Two-Factor Authentication.
If the financial sector—which holds the actual wealth of the nation—can secure itself against cyber threats, the electoral commission has no excuse. If our money is safe in the cloud, our mandate should be safe there too.
*The Conclusionf
Taxation is the citizen’s obligation to the state. Voting is the state’s obligation to the citizen.
You cannot modernize the obligation (Tax) while keeping the right (Voting) in the stone age. It is a breach of the social contract to use 21st-century AI to hunt down a tax evader, but use 19th-century paper to hunt down a missing ballot box.
We demand the Bitter Truth. We demand that the machine which takes our money be of the same caliber of machine that counts our voice.
Digitize the ballot, or stop automating the tax.
Chikena!!!
