DigitVote Passes First Test, As NITRA Elect National Officers

By Cyber Era Staff

DigitVote© an electronic voting (eVoting) platform developed primarily to assistant groups and organisations to entrench a transparent procedure in electioneering processes and powered by DigitalSENSE Africa Media, has scaled the first hurdle as a potentially disruptive voting solution, as it successfully guided the Nigeria Information Technology Reporters’ Association(NITRA) through a substantially successful national election that has produced officers to steer its affairs for the next three years.

DigitVote© is an electronically aided vote casting and vote counting solution which modus operandi involves transmission of ballots and votes via computer networks or the internet with infographic output, which can be customized to meet organisational needs.

Having received the necessary greenlight, DigitVote was deployed on Friday, February 28, 2020, wherein, NITRA members voted following email messages sent to their ‘accessible/working email addresses. ‘ They filled the required fields in the dialogue boxes in the e-form.  Cyber Era can report authoritatively that a few members reported initial delays in receiving the e-form on their devices, but this could have been due to communication network issues or minimal airtime on their devices, et cetera, but these were resolved  later and they were able to vote.

In the end, the Deputy Editor-in-chief of the Nigerian CommunicationsWeek, Chike Onwuegbuchi emerged as the new chairman of NITRA. He succeeds Emma Okonji, of ThisDay, to whom he had the privilege of deputizing over the course of the last three years.

Others elected with Onwuegbuchi included: Chidiebere Nwankwo  of eBusiness Life magazine, as Secretary, Ms Bukola Olanrewaju(Business Remarks) as Assistant Secretary, Chioma Ezike(Radio Nigeria) as Treasurer and Justus Adejumoh(Hallmark) as the Financial Secretary.

Chairman of the 2020 NITRA Election Committee, Aaron Ukodie(eWorld) disclosed that Onwuegbuchi scored 92.6 per cent of the total votes cast during the exercise to emerge as Chairman.

Nwankwo, he said, scored 70.4 per cent; Olanrewaju had 92.6 per cent; Ezike got 96.3 per cent and Adejumoh had 88.9 per cent to emerge respectively as the Secretary, Assistant Secretary, Treasurer and Financial Secretary in that order.

Ukodie praised members for the orderly conduct of the exercise both at the Nigeria Internet Registration Association(NiRA) House which served as  venue and via remote participation and urged other industry associations to emulate NITRA by introducing the electronic voting, especially the DigitVote developed by DigitalSENSE Africa Media.

According to Ukodie, Nigeria has hope only if “we can imbibe the culture of transparency as evident in evoting platform by DigitVote.”

Okonji  in his valedictory speech hailed the exercise as transparent and enjoined the new executive committee(Exco) to take the activities and achievements of NITRA under his administration to higher grounds.

He pointed out that after being the founding interim chairman, and later got the mandate for a term of three years, he knew the dynamics of leadership and was glad that his former vice chairman, whom “I groomed’ Onwuegbuchi emerged the new chair and congratulated the Onwuegbuchi-led executive committee while promising to always make himself available to ensure good counsel was offered to the new exco.

In his acceptance speech, after his swearing-in sworn-in, Onwuegbuchi promised to take the welfare of members seriously, while soliciting for support among bonafide members to ensure their expectations were met and surpassed.

“I will continue some of the achievements recorded and improve on others such as our Group Life Policy initiative, collapsing of our quarterly forum into yearly conference with expanded participation by companies among others,” he said, assuring on accountability and prudent management of resources, as did his predecessor.

Other members of the 2020 NITRA Election Committee led by Ukodie listed Remmy Nweke as Secretary, Patrick Aigbekan as Assistant Secretary and Louisa Olaniyi as Treasurer. The Committee was applauded for the transparent and innovative exercise in addition to gaining the mandate to organize a bye election for the office of the Vice Chairman and Internal Auditor within the next two weeks.