Developed Automated Electoral System Algorithm Using Biometric Data To Eliminate Electoral Irregularities In Nigeria

Abstract

This paper presents an aspect of research work that was carried out to resolve the many challenges in Nigeria electoral process. All efforts by Nigerian voters to ensure that their votes are counted and used to declare results in all the general elections conducted failed. The officials saddled with the responsibilities to conduct and declare election results in Nigeria, connived with dubious Politicians, thugs, and members of the Nigerian Police to rob eligible voters of their votes. Hence, all the elections in Nigeria have been marred with the worst form of electoral irregularities. To give credibility to elections in Nigeria therefore we proposed an automated electoral system that use biometric data to conduct all elections in order to protect and present accurate election results that truly represents „one person one vote‟. This research work accurately identified and removed all duplicate registrations in the voter‟s database. Equally we had an automated „one person one vote‟ election results by using Netcracker suite to simulate the automated election process for a network of 120,001 polling units, 8812 wards ,774 Local Government Areas, 36 States, and 6 Geo-Political areas and Abuja. We noted the Bandwidth, throughput, latency, bottleneck, and congestion challenges. The simulation and the associated results are not included in this paper. This automated electoral system was designed in accordance with Nigeria electoral laws and topographical data. We estimated that 370,000 ad hoc staff is needed to successfully implement and use this system, on Election Day, to conduct a free and fair election. Out of these numbers of staff 190,000 would be fully employed for the use of this equipment during and after the elections. The project cost estimate was USD $390,000,000. Our test results showed that the system can be physically and successfully implemented in Nigeria.