- Kaduna State of Nigeria Successfully Conducted theLocal Government Councils Election on 12 May 2018 using Electronic Voting Machine

On 12thMay, the Local Government Councils Election in Kaduna State, Nigeria was successfully conducted as officially announced by the KAD-SIECOM (Kaduna State Independent Electoral Commission), using the first time ever Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in Nigeria. The Governor of Kaduna State, Mr. Nasir El-Rufai, has stated, “On 12 May 2018, the people of Kaduna State heralded a new chapter in elections in Nigeria. We never doubted that our people will embrace electronic voting. It is my privilege today to thank the people of Kaduna State for the peaceful & orderly conduct of the Local Govt elections”.

In pursuit of a credible, transparent and fair voting, the Kaduna State Congress has passed the law of Electronic Election in 2017, under which the EVMs were requested to conduct the coming elections in 2018. In preparation of the Electronic Elections, a tender issued by KAD-SIECOM was awarded to Emperor Technology for designing, manufacturing thus supplying 6,000 units of EVMs along with relative onsite implementation, training and remote machine monitoring services. By the end of 2017, 6,000 units of EVMs were delivered to Nigeria on time and in full, with all required services well in place in all the political wards of the State with full acceptance and satisfactions from KAD-SIECOM.

According to the report from IFES (The International Foundation for Electoral Systems), on 12May 2018, all distributed units of EVMs were connected online for elections, with less than 0.4% election failures recorded by the end of the election, whereby such failures were mainly due to non-machine related human factors.