THE president of Nigeria Society of Engineers (NSE), Mustapha Shehu Balarabe, has said that the society adopted the electronic voting system so as to check observed irregularities.

While applauding the efforts of the engineers at the Nigeria Communications Satellite (NigComSat) Ltd for the technology, Balarabe at the weekend in Ilorin, Kwara State during the yearly general elections of the body noted that the technology deployment allows for transparency.

Balarabe said: "This innovation from engineers at NigComSat is commendable. It is novel and we are the pioneers, and this has proved that so many good things could come out of Nigeria and we engineers are pioneers in this regard of e-Voting

"The engineers have done what could be adopted by government in future general elections that is likely to save the Country from incessant huge capital flights."

Indeed, Balarabe said the innovations will free the country from post-election rancour and litigations by those who lost and think that the elections have been rigged in favour of their opponents.

Chairman of the NSE Elections Committee, Charles Mbanefo said he was very happy with the outcome of the election "that it was online real-time and it made the committee's job light because those who won and those who lost saw the transparency of the process. It was free and fair. Even people who were not at the venue monitored the election because it was web-based and results were updated real-time on the dedicated website for the election."

National Secretary, Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Mr. Shuaibu Leman Usman in his reaction to the NIGCOMSAT breakthrough in NSE e-voting said, "my view is that we should continue to look inward. Satellite business is a very sensitive issue and Nigeria cannot continue to rely on foreign satellites."