E-Democracy:A Requirement for A Successful E-Voting and E-Government Implementation in Nigeria
No Thumbnail Available
Date
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Tapas Institute of Scientific Research and Development
Abstract
Description
Reducing poverty by 50% through the use of information and communication technology (ICT),
which is the primary objective of the millennium development goals (MDGs) requires a lot of
innovations such as the implementation of e-Government, e-Democracy, e-Learning, e-Voting, eJudiciary,
and e-Health to mention but a few. Participatory democracy is a major requiremer1t for
achieving the MDGs, particularly, where majority of the citizenry is disenchanted with the
electioneering or democratic processes or governance. This paper reviews the rate of ICT diffusion
and the global ranking of the e-Government initiatives of some African countries. The paper also
presents the Nigerian National IT policy, the general views of some randomly selected electorates
concerning e-Voting, the voting pattern in the past elections, and the likely motivating factors for eVoting
in the country as well as the necessary requirements that will facilitate the successful
implementation of both e-Voting and e-Government initiatives. Similarly, the paper presents a
model for e-Democracy implementation for increased trust and participation in government.
Findings revealed that the apathy between electorates and government arose from lack of trust,
probity, transparency and accountability. Although, a reasonable percentage of the respondents
supported to the adoption of e-Voting, it is equally evident from the level of diffusion of IT facilities:
Internet and telephone, that there is still need for improved infrastructure. The position of Nigeria in
Africa and the world on global e-Government ranking is abysmally low and does not justify the
enormity of material and human resources available in the country. For a successful adoption of e-Voting
and e-Government, grassroot mobilization through e-Democracy should be encouraged.
Government should as a matter of urgency look into the inadequate basic infrastructures that
stimulates ICT diffusion and encourage interaction between the electorates and the elects through
the adoption of e-Democracy, which in turn encourages probity, transparency, accountability and
participation in governance
Keywords
QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science