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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the impact of digital technology in improving the quality of elections in Africa using Nigeria as a case study. Technology helped Nigeria's electoral umpire not only in producing credible voters register but also prevent the old practice of multiple and under-age voting.

Paper long abstract:

Elections are an important mechanism for institutionalizing democracy. However, Africa has the lowest levels of electoral integrity compared to other regions. Since the return of Nigeria to a multi-party system in 1999, its electoral process has been marred by irregularities. Nigeria's elections fell short of the electoral integrity threshold of being free, fair, and transparent. Five out of six presidential elections in Nigeria were challenged in the court. Electoral fraud undermines citizens’ ability to hold political leaders accountable, destroys citizens’ confidence in electoral and democratic institutions and sometimes leads to political violence. To bolster electoral integrity, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Nigeria deployed digital technology in conducting the 2023 elections. This paper is set to examine the impact of technology on the 2023 presidential election in Nigeria. The data was sourced through interviews with the INEC ad-hoc staff, media reports on the day of election, reports from INEC, local and international election monitoring groups and other written documents. The paper found that the technology used by INEC has induced behavioral change on the part of politicians who engage in stuffing ballot boxes since only accredited votes will be counted during collation and tallying of results. Technology helped to eliminate multiple and under-age voting which characterized the electoral process prior to its adoption. However, technology generates vulnerabilities. In the 2023 presidential election, reports show that politicians made several attempts to hack the INEC server-the vital election infrastructure-in order to manipulate the tabulation of the final results.