How an Engineer Modernized the Nigerian Voting System
In October 2000, when the electrician engineer Steve A. Adeshina joined the Nigeria National Electoral Commission (INEC) as director of information and communication technologies, the country had just tested its first successful democratic general elections in 17 years. The 1999 elections were generally peaceful, if not entirely reliable, according to independent observers. They were also technologically old -fashioned: “When I arrived, things were done essentially manually,” recalls Adeshina, some voters being recorded by hand and others by the typewriter.
Adshina, who headed her own information technology company, supervised the transition to recording forms for electors readable by the machine in 120,000 voting units, many of whom are in rural and difficult to reach places. To fill out these forms, candidates fill bubbles, the way this is on many standardized tests.
Steve A. Adshina
Employer: University of Nile of Nigeria
Occupation: IT vision teacher and engineering
Education: Baccalaureate in electrical and electronic engineering, University of Ilorini; Doctorate in Computer Vision and Engineering, University of Manchester
During its mandate for a decade at the Electoral Commission, Nigeria carried out several elections with increasing technological sophistication. The 2015 presidential elections, the first to take place after Eshina left the electoral commission, obtained positive examinations from independent observers and led to the first democratic transition of power between political parties in Nigeria.
Now, Adshina, 63, is a professor of vision and computer engineering at the University of Nile du Nigeria, in Abuja, and her three sons are at the start of their own career, all in engineering. Like many people her age, Adeshina has reached the point of providing advice to young engineers, included her sons, on the basis of her own long career. “The advice I have for them is to keep their minds open and to be creative and innovative,” he says.
Indeed, keeping an open mind allowed him to take advantage of these surprises. Adshina came to the public service in the private sector, having directed its own equipment and later the software service company, Logica Solutions Limited, for about a decade. When the Inec offered him a job, he “had no open spirit in the public sector,” he said. “I didn’t think they were doing anything or that I would stay for more than a few years. But I stayed for 10 years. “
Career surprises go back to the university days of Eddeshina. Like many engineers, he remembers trying to repair everything that broke at home when he was young. He therefore registered at the University of Ilorini, also in Nigeria, as a student in civil engineering in 1981. It was there that hot jobs were at the time. “Nigeria was under construction; Civil engineering was more popular, ”he says.
“The advice I have for [younger engineers] It is to keep their mind open and be creative and innovative. »»
In addition to other grass mechanical engineers, Adeshina has built a sander and some small bridges. But during a rotation through the Electricity Engineering Department, a standard element of its course, its teachers challenged it to build its own power unit then design and build the wiring for an entire house on a printed circuit, including distribution panels and household walls, all alone. He was surprised by how much he loved him. “It really really excited me, and that’s what made my decision,” recalls Adshina. He went into electrical engineering.
Edeshina’s first job involved working on time sharing computer on an early computer produced by North Star Computers. After three years there, he left to start Logica, where he started by adapting software designed for mainframes to work on less powerful but more affordable microcomputers adapted to the Nigerian market. But he was still looking for new problems to solve.
Modernization of the Nigeria voting system
As the INEC called Eadeshina to modernize the vote in 2000, Nigeria was on the verge of major changes. The soldiers who had reigned over the country and between 1966 and 1999, had given way to democracy at the same time as the Internet took a tenuous foot across Africa. Adshina and others have seen the potential to use the Internet to strengthen emerging civil society. The INEC asked him if the polls could report preliminary results in real time, while the workers of the elections finalized and certified the number of ballots. The idea was to make the results more reliable by making it more difficult to handle results, or at least increase red flags.
As Adeshina left Inec, he had helped allow the results of real -time elections via cellular networks. Here, the preliminary results are sent to a mobile phone during the 2011 legislative elections. George Osodi / Panos Pictures / Redux
At the time, the 2G cellular networks in Nigeria “had not really penetrated very far, but we were able to deploy radios which had the capacity to send attachments, even [connect with] Fax machines, ”explains Adshina. Help organizations have donated Inmarsat satellite terminals for the most difficult to reach voting units. “There are places you cannot get by a car. They use camels and perhaps motorcycles to go to these places, ”explains Adshina.
In such places, the vote occurs over several days to allow more participation. This adds to the challenge: voting machines must have batteries to manage the constant failures of an electric grid. It was a race against time to build the infrastructure for the 2002 elections. “We publish [collated results] On the Internet and the results were available to everyone, ”explains Adeshina. At the time of these first off-peak elections, Inec received real-time results of perhaps 80% of Nigerians, Edeshina estimates and had thus launched new technology.
The new president of the INEC then asked Adshina to embark on a new recording disc. The challenge was to see if Adshina and his team could improve the accuracy of voting reports using fingerprints and photos. They discovered up to 10 million duplicate registrations at a time when the whole population was around 126 million. He also proposed the predecessor of the identification cards for the country’s current voters, which included photos of the voter and were readable by the machine.
From the public service to the university world
At the time of his mandate from the INEC ended in 2011, Adeshina found a perch at the University of Nile du Nigeria, in Abuja, the Federal capital. There, he worked on a wide range of problems, in particular using inexpensive medical imaging to diagnose COVID-19 and explore standards for 6G telecommunications. “It is a voice respected in the digital world in Nigeria,” explains Biodun Omoniyi, CEO of the company with large band VDT Communications and former classmates of Edeshina.
Even years after leaving Inec, Adeshina finds himself thinking about the challenges of the elections. Due to its similar infrastructure and literacy levels, it turns to India to find out how to incorporate a completely electronic vote one day in Nigeria. “Time to start preparing the 2031 elections is now.
He now advises his sons and all young engineers to think about how they can apply their skills to improve their own country. “I don’t want everyone to leave Nigeria,” he said. “I would like to have a world class laboratory so that we can keep some of our students.” If they are lucky, these students can be able to apply their own engineering skills to the range of problems with which Adeshina fought.
With a multitude of experience in subjects and sectors, Adeshina continues to find the accomplishment in her work. “It seems to me that I lived three types of life: the private sector, the public sector and now academic,” he said. “With hindsight, I’m really very happy, but I’m not finished yet.”
From your site items
Related items on the web
